President Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, reportedly signed a “Cabinet order” late Tuesday that gives the thousands of U.S. troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border permission to carry out some law enforcement tasks and use force in certain situations in dealing with as many as 10,000 Central American migrants who have traveled to the country as part of a caravan.
The memo says “Department of Defense military personnel” can “perform those military protective activities that the Secretary of Defense determines are reasonably necessary” to protect themselves and all U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel, including “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention. and cursory search,” according to the Military Times.
Approximately 5,800 active-duty troops and 2,100 National Guard troops are stationed at various regions of the southern border.
Legal experts see a potential issue with the overnight decision because it may conflict with a law that was passed in 1898 regarding how military can carry out its duties in domestic situations. The Posse Comitatus Act gives military troops the right to defend themselves. It was intended to ensure federal troops did not have the power to act as law enforcement in states.
The law would be violated if troops either “perform tasks assigned to an organ of civil government” or “perform tasks assigned to them solely for purposes of civilian government,” according to the Congressional Research Service.
However, the congressional research office added that a president can “use military force to suppress insurrection or to enforce federal authority.”
Kelly, the White House chief of staff and former homeland security secretary, wrote in the order that the move was necessary because members of the group “may prompt incidents of violence and disorder,” which could threaten the lives of border agents and officers.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Following reports this month that members of the caravan were forcibly pushing their way past and throwing objects at Mexican authorities guarding entry points from Guatemala, Trump said any rock and stone throwing would be treated as a firearms incident.
“Anybody throwing stones, rocks — like they did to Mexico and the Mexican military, Mexican police, where they badly hurt police and soldiers of Mexico — we will consider that a firearm because there’s not much difference,” Trump told reporters. “Because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.”
He later said he was not advocating the military use firearms to respond to people throwing rocks.
“But if our soldiers or Border Patrol or ICE are gonna be hit in the face with rocks, we’re gonna arrest those people. That doesn’t mean shoot them. But we’re going to arrest those people quickly and for a long period of time,” Trump said to reporters during a press conference.
