Mattis: New White House directive does not change mission at the border

The 5,800 active-duty troops deployed at the US-Mexico border will remain largely unarmed and will not be expanded on their task of arresting migrants, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday – despite 39, a new White House order to provide new types of protection to border patrol officers.

"I'm reviewing it now," Mattis said of the order. But he added, "We do not enforce the law. We do not have the power to arrest. "

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This evolution reflects the current tensions between the White House and the Pentagon over the border mission ordered by President Donald Trump just before the mid-term elections. Trump has repeatedly stated that the number of his troops would increase and claimed to defend the United States against an "invasion" of migrants heading for Mexico via Mexico, but that the Pentagon sends fewer troops and insists on their only role is to support the civil authorities.

The new order, signed Tuesday evening by the White House chief of staff, John Kelly, does not assign new tasks to the army but allows Mattis to expand the tasks of his troops if the secretary to Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, asks. Neither the Pentagon nor the White House would immediately publish the text of the document.

"I now have the power to do more. Now we'll see what she asks me, "Mattis said Wednesday about Nielsen. He also referred to the law Posse Comitatus, a 19th century federal law prohibiting the use of troops on active service for the maintenance of the national order.

"We will decide if it suits the army, and at this point, actions like Posse Comitatus are obviously at stake," said Mattis. "We will remain in strict compliance with the law."

When asked why the White House had issued the memo if it did not significantly change the role of the troops, Mattis seemed to suggest that Trump himself had ordered Kelly to publish it for the sake of border patrol officers.

Kelly "has the power to do what the President tells him to do," said Mattis. "It is not an unreasonable preoccupation on the part of the president that we may have to save the border patrol."

But Mattis said the main means of protection for army officers will be what he has been: stringing together concertina wires and building other barriers at US entry points.

The army commander overseeing the border mission, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, told POLITICO this week that his troops did not have the power to defend border patrol officers, but only those responsible for the border patrol. Other military. "We have the power to protect ourselves, but it becomes essentially a policing task, and so the president has to order us to do it," Buchanan said.

On the other hand, the rules governing military activities in the United States already give troops the explicit power to protect non-military personnel involved in their missions. It was not clear if the Kelly memo was the extra step mentioned by Buchanan.

Mattis also downplayed the risk that the military mission would lead soldiers to shoot migrants – a possibility Trump spoke of as saying that he would react to anyone throwing stones as if he had a gun.

"They do not even carry weapons, for the sake of Christ," said Mattis to the question of how the army could avoid the repetition of an incident that occurred in 1997, during which Marines at the border shot a teenager in error. The military said the working groups that build fortifications at the border include a military police officer armed with a gun for three or four unarmed combat engineers.

If troops are used to defend border patrol agents in violent situations, whether under existing or new authorities, they will be "unarmed deputies with shields, batons, no weapons at all. fire, "said Mattis.

The only circumstance in which troops could detain migrants even for "minutes" at a time, he added, would be if they "hit a border policeman and we were able to stop them". the troops would quickly hand over the detainee to the civilian authorities, he said.