Memo proposed use of National Guard to round up illegal aliens

Plan never got an OK, official says

In this Feb. 24, 2015, file photo, members of the National Guard patrol along the Rio Grande at the Texas-Mexico border in Rio Grande City, Texas.
In this Feb. 24, 2015, file photo, members of the National Guard patrol along the Rio Grande at the Texas-Mexico border in Rio Grande City, Texas.

President Donald Trump's administration considered a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegal aliens, including millions living nowhere near the Mexican border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.



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Staff members in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said they had been told by colleagues in two divisions of the department that the proposal was still being considered as recently as Feb. 10. A department official described the document as a very early draft that was not seriously considered and never taken to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly for approval.

The 11-page document calls for the militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Ore., and as far east as New Orleans.

Four states that border Mexico were included in the proposal -- California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas -- but it also encompasses seven states contiguous to those four -- Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.

[DOCUMENT: Read the National Guard draft memo]

Governors in the 11 states would have had a choice whether to have their National Guard troops participate, according to the memo, which bears the name of Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Gillian Christensen declined to say who wrote the memo, how long it had been under consideration or when it had been rejected.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Friday that the document was "not a White House document."

"There is no effort to do what is potentially suggested," he said. Spicer called the report "100 percent not true," adding that there was "no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants."

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While National Guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration-related missions on the U.S.-Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.

The memo was addressed to the then-acting heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It would have served as guidance to implement the wide-ranging executive order on immigration and border security that Trump signed Jan. 25. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.

The draft memo, dated Jan. 25, says participating troops would be authorized "to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States." It describes how the troops would be activated under a revived state-federal partnership program, and states that personnel would be authorized to conduct searches and identify and arrest any illegal aliens.

Nearly one-half of the 11.1 million people residing in the U.S. illegally live in the 11 states, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on 2014 Census data.

Use of National Guard troops would greatly increase the number of immigrants targeted in one of Trump's executive orders last month, which expanded the definition of who could be considered a criminal and therefore a potential target for deportation. That order also allows immigration agents to prioritize removing anyone who has "committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense."

Under current rules, even if the proposal had been implemented, there would not be immediate mass deportations. Those with existing deportation orders could be sent back to their countries of origin without additional court proceedings. But deportation orders generally would be needed for most other illegal aliens.

The troops would not be nationalized, remaining under state control.

Hutchinson: Not Consulted

Spokesmen for the governors of the 11 states either declined to comment or said it was premature to discuss whether they would participate.

"We have not had any communication from the administration about the potential mobilization of the National Guard to aid in immigration enforcement," Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters.

Hutchinson, a former undersecretary in the Homeland Security Department under President George W. Bush, said that "it is not unusual to utilize the National Guard. We utilized them when I was in the [Bush] administration for border enforcement efforts and special causes."

"In terms of Arkansas, I just helped deploy some of our National Guard troops to the Middle East; they are heavily deployed right now," Hutchinson said. "It would be a human resource drain on our National Guard to give them any immigration enforcement responsibilities, so I am not a fan of that. This is only a draft order at this point, so it just a discussion point. ... I think it would strain our National Guard in terms of their responsibilities, if you added another burden on them right now."

Asked if he would rule out using the National Guard for immigration enforcement, Hutchinson said that "I would want to see the details, the purpose of it and what the plan would be. I would want to talk to my adjutant general, Mark Berry, and get his views on it, and so I don't rule out anything until I see the plan and how the costs are allocated. But I am concerned in terms of adding that mission to already burdened National Guard force."

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert would have serious concerns about the constitutional implications and financial impact of activating the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants, the governor's office said in a statement.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's office said in a statement Friday that the governor "has not received, much less seen, a memo or request from the White House or Department of Homeland Security regarding the use of Texas National Guard troops for immigration enforcement."

Abbott spokesman John Wittman added: "The White House has adamantly denied there are efforts underway to mobilize the National Guard for this purpose."

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said she was "glad to hear" that the Homeland Security Department said it never seriously considered the draft memo," according to her spokesman, Chris Pair. He said Brown will fight to keep Oregon "a welcoming and inclusive place for all Oregonians, regardless of heritage, religion, or immigration status."

In New Mexico, a group of Catholic leaders called the draft proposal a "declaration of some form of war."

Allen Sanchez, executive director of the New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the Roman Catholic Church in the nation's most Hispanic state would strongly oppose any effort to use National Guard troops to find and deport immigrants.

He said using the National Guard on a peaceful population would be like declaring a war within the U.S. borders.

Past Troop Call-Ups

The proposal would have extended the federal-local partnership program that President Barack Obama's administration began scaling back in 2012 to address complaints that it promoted racial profiling.

The 287(g) program, which Trump included in his immigration executive order, gives local police, sheriff's deputies and state troopers the authority to assist in the detection of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally as a regular part of their law enforcement duties on the streets and in jails.

The draft memo also mentions other items included in Trump's executive order, including the hiring of an additional 5,000 border agents, which needs financing from Congress, and his campaign promise to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

The signed order contained no mention of the possible use of state National Guard troops.

According to the draft memo, the militarization effort was to be proactive, specifically empowering Guard troops to solely carry out immigration enforcement, not as an add-on the way local law enforcement is used in the program.

In addition to responding to natural or man-made disasters or for military protection of the population or critical infrastructure, state Guard forces in the past have been used to assist with immigration-related tasks on the U.S.-Mexico border, including the construction of fences.

In the mid-2000s, President George W. Bush twice deployed Guard troops on the border to focus on non-law enforcement duties to help augment the Border Patrol as it bolstered its ranks. And in 2010, then-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced a border security plan that included Guard reconnaissance, aerial patrolling and military exercises.

In July 2014, then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered 1,000 National Guard troops to the border when the surge of migrant children fleeing violence in Central America overwhelmed U.S. officials responsible for their care. The Guard troops' stated role on the border at the time was to provide extra sets of eyes but not make arrests.

Bush initiated the federal 287(g) program -- named for a section of a 1996 immigration law -- to allow specially trained local law enforcement officials to participate in immigration enforcement on the streets and check whether people held in local jails were in the country illegally. Immigration and Customs Enforcement trained and certified roughly 1,600 officers to carry out those checks from 2006 to 2015.

The memo describes the program as a "highly successful force multiplier" that identified more than 402,000 "removable aliens."

But federal watchdogs were critical of how the Homeland Security Department ran the program, saying it was poorly supervised and provided insufficient training to officers, including on civil-rights law. Obama phased out all the arrest power agreements in 2013 to instead focus on deporting recent border crossers and immigrants in the country illegally who posed a safety or national security threat.

Trump's immigration strategy emerges as detentions at the nation's southern border are down significantly from levels seen in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Last year, the arrest tally was the fifth-lowest since 1972. Deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally also increased under the Obama administration, though Republicans criticized Obama for setting prosecution guidelines that spared some groups from the threat of deportation, including those brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Last week, immigration officers arrested more than 680 people around the country in what Kelly said were routine, targeted operations; advocates called the actions stepped-up enforcement under Trump.

Information for this article was contributed by Garance Burke and staff members of The Associated Press and by Michael R. Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

A Section on 02/18/2017

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