[ad_1]
While 400 US Army police officers were redeployed to San Diego, the Trump Administration approved the use of troops at the border for law enforcement duties, declaring that they are allowed to use lethal force, according to a memo obtained by the White House Newsweek.
The "memorandum of decision" was signed on Tuesday by President Donald Trump and passed through Derek S. Lyons, Harvard-trained lawyer and White House staff secretary for John Kelly, chief of staff of the White House and former general of the US Navy. The documents were obtained from a source in the Department of Defense.
Kelly signed the memorandum Tuesday night authorizing members of the US services to perform "military protection activities," allowing members of the services to use, "a demonstration or resort to force (including force murderous, if any), crowd control, temporary detention and superficial search, as decided by Defense Secretary James Mattis, to protect customs officers and border protection.
The news of this note was first reported by The Military Times on Wednesday morning, but said the president had not approved the White House directive. The memo obtained by Newsweek Trump watch signed the order to Mattis. (You can read the full note at the bottom of this article.)
The White House released the memo the same day Newsweek reported that the North American Army will move approximately 400 police officers from the port of entry from Brownsville, Texas to the San Ysidro Land entry port in San Diego over the next three days, according to a Department of Defense source knowing the South Border Mission.
Military police officers will support CBP officers as the initial wave of migrants reaches the border between California and Mexico.
A spokesman for the North American Army said Newsweek On Wednesday morning, they had not received any indication of the White House memo, as the Defense Department was in the process of refining the operational details of the directive.
Mattis told reporters Wednesday at a Pentagon press conference that US forces would not violate the Posse Comitatus Act, the federal law of 1878 limiting the government's ability to use the US military as a police force.
Under federal law, US troops are allowed to use lethal force to defend themselves and defend others and their property.
However, the rules governing the use of force require lethal force to be used only when "all means of lesser importance have failed or can not be reasonably used", according to a 2012 Handbook of the Agency. security and defense cooperation published by Public Intelligence, an online collaborative research project. who publishes government documents.
"They push the authority of the DoD to the limit of what is allowed without violating the restrictions of Posse Comitatus." Active duty personnel can defend border authorities, but the ideal world does not exist. not in fact, in which this subjective concept can be applied perfectly to the environment of border controls, "said Brad Moss, a lawyer specializing in border control, in national security.
According to the Military Times, defense officials said the wording of the White House directive was carefully crafted to stay within the legal limits set by Posse Comitatus.
However, according to Moss, the areas most exposed to Posse Comitatus violations are members of US services involved in crowd control and detention of migrants.
"It becomes the undefined gray line between emergency situations and routine border checks," Moss said. The government must specify in much more detail the moment when one or the other of these behaviors is tolerated. "
"It is virtually guaranteed that despite the alleged good faith efforts of active duty personnel, several repeated violations of the Posse Comitatus restrictions will be committed."
The directive signed by Kelly indicates that the additional authorities granted to the Ministry of Defense were motivated by "credible evidence and intelligence" indicating that thousands of migrants arriving at the entry point near Tijuana, Mexico, " could cause incidents of violence and disorder "that could threaten border authorities. .
Since the announcement of the deployment of troops on the southern border of the United States, reports have questioned the credibility of the intelligence services praised by the DHS and the White House.
Tuesday, Newsweek confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security was actively spying on migrants traveling to the US southern border via undercover informants who were remunerated and infiltrated into WhatsApp text messaging groups that the caravan uses to coordinate.
Information gathered from informants and text messages is combined with reports from DHS staff working with the Mexican government, according to NBC News, who first reported the information.
In addition, NBC News reported that over the weekend, DHS intelligence services indicated that a group of migrants wanted to cross the lanes reserved for cars from a border post located at the border. near San Diego, prompting CBP to close all northbound lanes between 3 am and 6 am the passage of migrants never took place.
Earlier this month, Newsweek reported that the Pentagon had not been informed of the existence of hundreds of suspected suspects who would travel with the migrant caravan.
Newsweek has not been able to determine how DHS has pre-emptively identified at least 270 migrants with criminal histories in the convoy and concluded that they were not eligible to apply for it. ;asylum.
On the eve of Thanksgiving, about 5,900 active soldiers and 2,100 members of the National Guard are deployed at the US-Mexico border in anticipation of what the president calls an "invasion."
[ad_2]
Source link
