A group of border state House Democrats called for the Pentagon inspector general to investigate President Trump’s deployment of the military to the southern border and determine whether it violates the Constitution.
Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and California Reps. Juan Vargas, Barbara Lee, and Judy Chu gathered outside the U.S. Capitol Friday morning and urged the Defense Department to respond to their September letter demanding the investigation.
“What we are asking today is, ‘Is it legal?’ We have strong reasons to believe it’s not,” said Chu, who represents residents northeast of Los Angeles.
Last October, Trump approved the deployment of 5,200 soldiers to the southern border ahead of what the president described as a caravan of people headed to the border from Central America.
“Almost a year after the president announced the first deployment, the mandate that he’s using remains totally unclear,” said Grijalva, whose district runs along the Mexican border in western Arizona. “However, the law itself is crystal clear. According to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, U.S. military forces are prohibited from enforcing domestic law unless explicitly authorized by the U.S. Congress.”
The troops are expected to perform logistical duties. The Posse Comitatus Act limits the government’s ability to use the military, mainly the Army, to enforce laws within the United States. The National Guard is exempted from the law.
In a Sept. 19 letter to Defense Principal Deputy Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, 34 lawmakers asked about whether troops were armed, the guidelines for their use of service weapons, whether and how they are permitted to interact with migrants in Department of Homeland Security custody, and how they should interact with the public.
CNN first reported in June that active-duty troops were working inside Customs and Border Protection facilities. Despite defense officials’ earlier comments they would not carrying out law enforcement duties, Newsweek reported in October that U.S. military members were given legal authority to shoot at moving vehicles at official border crossings. Democrats want to know the basis for this authority.
Thirty-four organizations endorsed the call for a formal investigation in September, and some of those groups dropped off a petition containing 100,000 signatures at the inspector general’s office this week, a House Democratic aide told the Washington Examiner in an email Friday.
A Pentagon official said in January the Trump administration chose to send 5,900 active-duty members instead of the National Guard because they were more readily available, after thousands of guardsmen had been deployed in April.
Vargas, speaking in front of the Capitol Friday, said the nearly half-billion-dollar operation is unjustified. “The people that are showing up are children. The people that are showing up are families asking for asylum. They’re not hiding as terrorists.”
In October, the number of adults illegally crossing the border surpassed for the first time in more than a year the number of people who arrived with a child or family member.
