Comes under fire

Trump’s troop deployment to the border comes under fire

By TED HESSON and WESLEY MORGAN

The Pentagon's decision to send 5,200 active-duty troops to beef up the Mexican border — just days before the midterm elections — drew swift criticism Monday from some former military and national security officials who accused President Donald Trump of abusing the military for partisan gain.

“It’s a craven misuse of the U.S. armed forces for an obvious political stunt, and I’m surprised [Defense] Secretary Mattis agreed to it, given the range of real national security threats our military has to deal with,” said Kelly Magsamen, who served on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

“This is not an appropriate use of the military," added Magsamen, who’s now vice president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. "That Mattis feels the need to appease the president on this should be shocking, and Congress should have a lot of questions about it.”

Even some supporters of the move were unsure exactly what all these active-duty troops would do at the border. Trump has already deployed roughly 2,100 National Guardsmen to the Southwest, though — as POLITICO reportedlast summer — they are staying miles from the border and largely performing support tasks such as maintaining vehicles and analyzing intelligence footage for the U.S. Border Patrol.

The latest deployment, which the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection called "unprecedented," is expected to be completed within a week, as voters go to the polls in an election that could flip control of one or both houses of Congress in Democrats’ favor — or cement a pro-Trump Republican majority for another two years.

It also comes after several weeks in which Trump has repeatedly warned of a "national emergency" posed by a caravan of several thousand migrants from Central America slowly heading north through Mexico, even though they are roughly 1,000 miles from the nearest stretch of the U.S. border.

Scott Cooper, a Marine veteran and director of national security outreach for the advocacy group Human Rights First, said CBP, the Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies appear equipped to handle the situation and don't need thousands of military reinforcements at the moment.

“I try not to be a cynic, but this just smacks of looking for a political advantage during an election,” Cooper said. “I think that the military redeploys probably within the next couple weeks and they will have done very little. I’m just kind of scratching my head as to the need for this."

One retired senior Army officer with experience on the border also questioned the wisdom of using active-duty troops to build barriers and fulfill support tasks that have traditionally been carried out by part-time National Guard or Army Reserve units.

He pointed out that the National Guard — the state militias normally under the control of governors — can also perform some law enforcement functions that federal law prohibits active-duty troops from engaging in.

"They’re the ones who could actually help CBP perform detentions if called upon without violating Posse Comitatus,” said the retired officer, referring to the law limiting federal troops from operating domestically. The officer, who agreed to speak on the condition he not be identified, added: “The active-duty guys can’t do any of that."

The new mission, dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot, is also likely to draw the troops away from regularly scheduled combat training, and "it’s going to impose a burden on units that already spend a lot of time deployed away from their families," he added.

The operation will push the total military presence on the southern border to more than 7,000, roughly the same number fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The troops will include military engineers to construct additional barriers and fencing, as well as helicopter units and cargo aircraft to move border security personnel quickly to remote locations. A smaller number of medical personnel and military police will also be deployed to the border, including some who will be armed, Air Force Gen. Terrence O'Shaughnessy, the commander of the U.S. Northern Command, told reporters Monday.

The orders come after Trump has raged for weeks about the group of mostly Honduran migrants trekking through Mexico en route to the U.S. The migrants remain near the Chiapas-Oaxaca border in southern Mexico.

Trump has alleged, without evidence, that criminals and potential Middle Eastern terrorists have embedded in the group, although he conceded last week he had “no proof” of the latter.

On Monday he tweeted: "Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border. Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!”

Trump’s heightened rhetoric on the caravan comes as Republicans scramble to rally their base before next week’s election and as he plans to continue holding rallies around the country over the coming days.

Democrats remain the favorite to win control of the House, but polls show immigration is the top issue for Republican voters.

It is the timing of the military deployment that struck some Trump critics as an abuse of power.

The troop surge is "a political ploy orchestrated by President Trump to create a false sense of hysteria in an effort to appease his white nationalist supporters,” Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas), the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, tweeted after the announcement.

O’Shaughnessy, the top military commander responsible for the defense of North America, declined to say at a news conference Monday whether he agrees that the caravan presents a "national emergency."

“I think the president has made it clear that border security is national security,” he told reporters. “We’re here to support CBP and we’re going to secure the border."

He also stressed that the mission will comply with the Posse Comitatus Act. "The specific request for assistance is for the active-duty military to enhance the capacity and capabilities of CBP," he said.

CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told reporters that the migrant caravan, once estimated to be as large as 7,000 people, has since shrunk in half. He said that if the caravan actually reaches the U.S. border, CBP’s specially trained paramilitary units will still likely take the lead, not the military.

“The Border Patrol Special Operations Group guys are very good at what they do, so I’m confident that if anything escalates, the Border Patrol is more than capable of handling it,” McAleenan said. “They just don’t have the manpower to be everywhere at once.”

He also revealed that CBP is tracking a second caravan with an estimated 3,000 people at a border crossing between Guatemala and Mexico.

But the officials declined to explain why Trump had requested active-duty troops instead of additional personnel from National Guard units with similar capabilities.

While the use of some active-duty troops for some niche tasks like surveillance and locating tunnels is not unprecedented, the Pentagon has long resisted such large deployments of its primary fighting forces because it is not their main task, said another former senior officer with experience at U.S. Northern Command.

“There has been a resistance because it’s not our core competency, and it goes to Posse Comitatus and law enforcement and what’s the role of the military,” the former officer said. “So we have deferred it to the National Guard in the past, and I think that’s worked well.”

Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army, countered that active-duty troops are better equipped to get in place quickly than the National Guard. He pointed out that they also could ultimately cost less because National Guard troops would have to be called up.

"You are already paying for the active-duty," he said. "You are paying for that 2,100 Guardsmen out of the Defense Department's coffers."

But the sheer number is what also struck Magsamen, the former Bush and Obama official, as overkill.

“Does Mattis agree that this caravan of what are essentially refugees fleeing violence in their home countries presents as great a threat to the United States as ISIS in Iraq and Syria?" she asked. "It obviously doesn’t."

Even Keane, who said he supports the president's move, predicted the troops will be eager to remain in the background and avoid any confrontation with unarmed refugees.

"I don't think they are looking forward to what this visual will be," he said, "trying to provide some kind of human barrier to stop people from coming into the United States."