Trump aiming to circumvent Posse Comitatus Act to unleash military on American civilians

By Mike Killalea, NSD president

Prez Felon’s executive orders to deploy 1500 or more soldiers to our southern border also lays the groundwork for using American troops for law enforcement, according to “The Bulwark.” Use of troops for law enforcement is prohibited by 1878 Posse Comitatus Act.

However, MAGA believes that by ordering troops to “assist” in law enforcement is a loophole to Posse Comitatus, which prohibits use of the military “in direct support of law enforcement” within the US.

Here’s a quick summary of the immigration exec orders (EOs) by Mark Nevitt at Just Security. (Nevitt is a military lawyer and professor at Emory Law School):

• There are two border EOs. The first declares a “national emergency” at the border. The second “[clarifies] the military’s role in protecting the territorial integrity of the United States.”

• The second EO directs the SecDef to submit a plan to “[repel] forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities.” [Bold added by The Bulwark.]

• “Invasion” is a legal, not a descriptive, word. Put a pin in this . . .

• In a third “statement of America First priorities,” Trump declared that the U.S. military would “assist” law enforcement in “border security.”

As the article discusses, the net effect of this language isn’t just about immigration. It’s about a fundamental shift in American norms concerning the domestic use of the military. Here’s Nevitt:

“[B]y characterizing immigration as an “invasion” and tasking the military with protecting “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the United States along our national borders,” the second executive order may expand the “military purpose doctrine” beyond historical usage (and inching closer to a law enforcement purpose instead).”

Why the word “invasion”?

Nevitt: “[C]ourts have held that Posse Comitatus Act restrictions do not apply to federal troops’ actions taken primarily for a “military purpose”—even if such activities benefit law enforcement. The military purpose doctrine authorizes incidental assistance to law enforcement—this could act as a bit of a legal workaround to the general prohibition of direct law enforcement support. . . . The military purpose doctrine authorizes “actions taken for the primary purpose of further[ing] a Department of Defense or foreign affairs function of the United States.”

Uh oh

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/two-words-and-a-world-of-trouble