President-elect Donald Trump has promised to use the United States military to help deport millions of undocumented immigrants, in a plan that breaks with the country’s tradition of not deploying troops domestically, but which legal experts say would still be difficult to achieve. successfully challenged in the courts.
Trump aides have said they intend to use the military to build detention camps or transport undocumented immigrants out of the U.S., freeing up Border Patrol and immigration agents for investigations and seizures.
Experts said the government would have legal coverage if the military limited itself to support roles, especially along the border with Mexico, without interacting with suspects.
“I think there probably won’t be many successful challenges,” said Ryan Burke, a professor of military and strategic studies at the U.S. Air Force Academy, offering his personal opinion.
“There’s too much ambiguity in these laws to point to something that says, ‘Hey, you absolutely can’t do this.’”
The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prevents federal military personnel from participating in national law enforcement. Congress created exceptions that allowed presidents to successfully use active-duty armed forces in support roles, such as combating the illegal drug trade or during breakdowns of law and order.
Trump has not explained how he plans to employ the military to deport immigrants. In a post last week on Truth Social, he responded “TRUE!!!” to another user’s post saying that his new government would use “military resources” in a mass deportation operation.
“President Trump will mobilize all federal and state powers necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug traffickers and human traffickers in American history,” said Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt , in a statement last Monday (25).
Every president since Bill Clinton in the 1990s has sent the National Guard or active-duty troops to the border in support roles such as surveillance, training and equipment repair.
Experts said support role exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act could also allow the military to build vast camps to hold people who will be removed. Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration adviser, presented this proposal to the New York Times in November 2023.
Deporting one million undocumented immigrants a year will require the government to increase its detention capacity 20-fold, according to a report from the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group.
Michel Paradis, a former Defense Department lawyer, said the more the military is asked to do, the more opportunities there will be for legal challenges, even in a support role.
He said using the military to build a detention camp could give a governor grounds to sue if funds for the camp were diverted from a project in that governor’s state.
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This content was originally published in Trump’s plan to use the army in deportation must be approved by courts on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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