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Senior army officers defended the deployment for reasons of national security, but the mission, dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot, raises many questions. Many veterans have condemned this operation as a political coup launched by a president eager to light his political base in a few days. mid-term elections.
"Donald Trump believes that unarmed people fleeing the horrors and still 1,000 miles is a threat to national security a week before polling day?" said Will Fischer, a former sailor who is now working for the VoteVets, a progressive veteran organization.
"I do not think so," said Fischer. "It's a political ploy to silence racism and nativism, and he's using the military again as political support to advance his own agenda."
Fischer and other veterans point to the unknown cost to taxpayers, since much smaller National Border deployments cost hundreds of millions of dollars. They also question the cost that the army will bear, the operation bringing troops back to training, to other missions and their families. And then, they say, there is the troubled legality of the mission, its scope and purpose.
Nevertheless, the Pentagon looks set to go ahead with the deployment and military officials said Tuesday that the number of soldiers would exceed 5,200 soldiers, a number that will exceed the number of US military currently fighting what remains of the US military. Islamic state in Iraq and Syria.
US troops will join more than 2,000 National Guards already on the border, meaning more than 7,000 US forces will be mobilized to arrest Central American migrants who are still more than 900 miles from the border and in weeks of their arrival in the United States.
Currently, 5,239 soldiers are to be deployed at the border, but their numbers are likely to increase, according to General Terence O 'Shaughnessy, head of Northern Command, who said the Pentagon did not yet know how many additional forces could be added .
When asked if the army was being used as a political tool, Mr. O. Shaughnessy said on Tuesday: "I firmly believe that border security is a national security."
"This caravan is different from what we have seen in the past," he said, referring to the group of migrants heading north to claim asylum and claiming their size – around 3,500 people at the present time – posed security problems.
A detachment of US Marines will also participate in the border security operation, according to two defense officials. Planning for the exact composition of the Marine Detachment is still underway, but it will consist of engineers and will provide support to customs and border patrol services.
Another US defense official told CNN on Tuesday that some 2,000 additional US troops have been identified as a reserve force and could be sent to the border if needed.
Political scheme?
Despite Trump's unsupported assertion that the group of Central Americans includes "gang members and some very nasty people", most of the migrants reportedly wanted to apply for asylum as soon as they arrived in the United States. United States.
"This is not a national security problem, we see women, children and the elderly fighting for their lives, we do not need more soldiers here. down, "said Bishop Garrison, acting executive director of the Truman National Security Project, a left-wing organization focused on national security and veterans issues.
"We do not need to make a problem sensitive or a situation any more dramatic," said Garrison, former head of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.
Fischer and a former military official, interviewed separately, raised the issue of the rules of engagement of the troops. The former commander, who worked for the central command while Defense Secretary James Mattis was a commander, asked, "What will happen if something happens if a lethal force is deployed and that the US military is firing on unarmed civilians? "
"There are laws, there are regulations on how the army can and should be used," said the official. "As a person who has deployed and said goodbye to my wife and children many times, you want to be confident about the mission." Sending troops to the border to defend against unarmed civilians is simply absurd . "
Anger at the deployment and the perception that Mattis allowed the use of the military for political purposes prompted a former Pentagon official to ask him to resign.
"It's a brazen political coup by President Trump in front of the United States and a cynical capitulation of a Defense Secretary who prides himself on improving the readiness, focus and lethality of the armed forces." "said Kelly Magsamen, National Security Officer. A Council official, chaired by both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, wrote in Defense One.
"If Mattis does not believe that migrants pose a threat that justifies the allocation of 5,000 active soldiers to the border, he should say so and resign," wrote Magsamen.
Cost and preparation issues
Fischer raised concerns about the readiness of the troops, saying that once these troops are at the border, "they will not train, they will not prepare for the fighting that could occur on the horizon as a result of legitimate threats ".
Instead, said Fischer, these troops will be tasked with supporting the border authorities in a way that means "we are going to spend huge sums and huge resources for these troops to act as runners, my fellow dressed camouflage for [homeland security] and border patrol personnel ".
"This takes away mission preparation and it's Donald Trump who's doing politics with our national security," Fischer said.
The former military officer, who had accumulated two decades of experience as an officer before becoming a strategist, said the troops were sent to "do a mission that could be entrusted to another entity. "like the National Guard. .
Dave McGinnis, a former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense, agreed.
"The big problem that I and many former military and active members have with this thing is that the Posse Comitatus [law] forbidden to the military to enforce national laws unless there is no other choice and that Trump has a lot of choices, "McGinnis said.
The president might have recourse to federal law enforcement forces, such as the US Marshals or the Army and the National Guard. There is also immigration and customs enforcement, notes McGinnis. "We already have an organization that enforces this civil right – it's called ICE."
In 2010, President Obama sent 1,200 National Guard soldiers to reinforce border security, but these levels are insignificant compared to the number of active-duty soldiers sent by Trump.
Advocates of this deployment argue that Trump makes a wise decision in the short term.
"The president and the administration want to appear to act decisively (…) they want to appear strong. (…) The army is a quick way to react , in many cases, to things, "said Tom Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundation Center. for National Defense and a veteran of the US military, said.
Spoehr noted, however, that if the military could provide a quick and effective response option, the president should not rely on these troops more than two or three months.
The former official pointed out that US law prohibits the army from detaining people, "so it's not like we're sending an operational force, it's just people playing a role This is why I say it's a waterfall, so [Trump] can say, yes, we are sending the army to the border. "
McGinnis said Trump's decision was also a precedent. "If Congress allows him to do that, you push the limits using the army for things that this country has never allowed," he said.
"The visual on the world is really bad from the military point of view," McGinnis said. "He uses regular military troops for tasks that democracies do not really do."
Cost is also a major concern. Congressional sources in the armed forces committees of the House and Senate told CNN that they had not received any Pentagon cost data.
And although Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood told CNN on Tuesday that the final pricing details were still under development, immigration critics argue that sending Troops at the border to respond to families fleeing violence is fundamentally a waste of money.
"This is not fair for the troops," said Garrison of Truman's National Security Project. "It will be very expensive and simply wrong," he said, saying it was foolish to send the army to handle this humanitarian crisis.
