WASHINGTON -- The request from President Donald Trump's administration for the Pentagon to house people detained at the U.S. southern border and even help prosecute them is prompting concern about strains on the military.
Some call it an inappropriate mission.
"We shouldn't be militarizing border enforcement," Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said in an interview.
Defense Secretary James Mattis, who has made it his top priority to improve the military's fitness for combat, argues that the Pentagon is nonetheless obliged to help with border enforcement.
In recent days, Mattis has accepted requests by the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services to provide temporary housing on Air Force and Army bases for potentially tens of thousands of detained families and unaccompanied children. This is in line with historical precedents for military assistance, Mattis argued.
"We have housed refugees, we have housed people thrown out of their homes by earthquakes and hurricanes; we do whatever is in the best interest of the country," he recently told reporters. But he also has insisted that decisions about immigration policy and its security implications are not his to make. "I'm not going to chime in from the outside," he said.
The Pentagon says it received a Department of Homeland Security request to house up to 12,000 detained family members, starting with shelters for 2,000 people to be available within 45 days. The initial shelters are likely to be at Fort Bliss in Texas, but subsequent tent cities could be at two other bases in border states.
The Pentagon has indicated Mattis will honor these requests, but no steps have been taken yet to move people onto the bases.
Mattis has emphasized that members of the military will not be directly involved in detaining or securing migrants. By law, the military is barred from performing domestic law enforcement functions such as arresting people crossing the border, but it has sometimes provided support for border security, including monitoring surveillance imagery and repairing border fences.
Nonetheless, Mattis has been the target of pointed objections from senators critical of the Pentagon taking on a bigger role, including request earlier this month to lend 21 military lawyers to the Justice Department to help prosecute immigration cases at the border.
"Clearly, the military needs more, not fewer, lawyers available for its critical military justice practice," Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote in a letter to Mattis last week.
"Instead, we have now learned the services will be diverting these valuable resources to support a non-military mission," the senators wrote, adding that they are "deeply troubled" by what they consider a misuse of military personnel.
The Pentagon has agreed to set up tents -- which it calls "semi-separate, soft-sided camp facilities" -- at Fort Bliss, if needed, for detained families starting this summer. It also has agreed to make housing available at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas for up to 20,000 unaccompanied children detained for crossing the southern border without authorization.
These shelter operations, which could last for months, are to be run by the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services or their contractors, not the Pentagon, but defense officials say it is possible that the Pentagon will end up erecting the shelters.
This is not unprecedented. The Pentagon temporarily housed several thousand unaccompanied detained minors in 2014 at military bases. This year's problem has drawn wider attention and sharper criticism in part because of the administration's now-suspended practice of separating children from parents at the border.
Even some Republicans who support Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration are unenthusiastic.
"I am not convinced at this point that housing them in our military installations is the best short-term answer, especially if it harms regular base operations, crowds our service members, and distracts from the mission of defense," Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said in a statement. His district includes Dyess Air Force Base, which is among bases under consideration for sheltering detained children.
NEW ACTIVISTS
Meanwhile, people who have spent years fighting to change the country's immigration system are getting newfound support from liberal activists, moms and first-time protesters.
The National Park Service is prepared for 50,000 people to rally outside the White House and march on the Department of Justice today, according to a permit issued this week. Demonstrators will demand an end to family detentions and the return of at least 2,500 children who were separated from their families.
Several speakers, including Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, and actors America Ferrera and Diane Guerrero will take the stage at Lafayette Square to kick off the protest, which begins at 11 a.m. People who have lived through the Holocaust, Japanese internment camps and Trump's family-separation policy are expected to speak.
About 750 similar protests have been planned throughout the country in every state, from big cities such as New York and Los Angeles, to tiny ones such as Antler, N.D., population 28.
Though many protesters are seasoned anti-Trump demonstrators, others are new to immigration activism, including parents who say they feel compelled to show up. In Portland, Ore., for example, several stay-at-home moms are organizing their first rally while caring for their children.
"I'm not a radical, and I'm not an activist," said Kate Sharaf, a Portland co-organizer. "I just reached a point where I felt I had to do more."
She and others are undaunted after nearly 600 women wearing white and railing against the now-abandoned separation policy were arrested Thursday in Washington, D.C. With demonstrations emerging nationwide, immigrant-advocacy groups say they're thrilled -- and surprised -- to see the issue gaining traction among those not tied to immigration.
"Honestly, I am blown away. I have literally never seen Americans show up for immigrants like this," said Jess Morales Rocketto, political director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which represents nannies, housekeepers and caregivers, many of whom are immigrants. "We just kept hearing over and over again, if it was my child, I would want someone to do something."
The federal government has reunified hundreds of families in recent weeks, but many still remain separated.
Earlier this week, an immigrant-rights organizer took Ludin, 43, of Guatemala, to the Austin airport for a flight to Providence, R.I., so she could reunite with her two children she had not seen in more than a month.
Forty days earlier, federal immigration officials in McAllen, Texas, had taken Ludin's 9-year-old daughter, Keyri, after the family had crossed the border without authorization while seeking asylum. Ludin said a gang had threatened to kill her teenage son, Elmer.
"I thought I'd never see them again," Ludin said the day after she was released. "How would I come to give them away?"
Ludin's son and daughter were among the children detained and separated from their parents. Unlike many of the families, Ludin, who asked that her last name not be published because of fears for the safety of her and her family, was not criminally prosecuted.
Her asylum case is pending, as are the cases for her daughter and 17-year-old son. Her husband, also named Elmer, traveled to the United States two years ago after his brother was killed and his life was threatened. His asylum case also is pending.
Ludin recalled conversations she had with other women in detention.
"Many women were saying, 'You're the lucky one, you're going to see your kids, you're going to hug them. We still can't.' There are poor people still suffering, not knowing where their kids are."
On Wednesday, Ludin was reunited with her children and husband. They are allowed to stay together while their asylum cases are being processed.
'DEPORTATION FORCE'
Several prominent Democrats, meanwhile, began calling for major changes this week to immigration enforcement, with some pressing for the outright abolition of the federal government's chief immigration-enforcement agency.
Gillibrand, a possible 2020 presidential contender, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, has "become a deportation force."
The call from Gillibrand came two days after 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won an upset victory over fourth-ranking House Democrat Joe Crowley in a primary contest for his Queens-area New York district.
Ocasio-Cortez emphasized abolishing the agency in her campaign, a goal that has no support among Republicans and is unlikely to be achieved anytime soon.
"I don't think ICE today is working as intended," Gillibrand said. "And I think that you should separate the criminal justice from the immigration issues and I think you should reimagine ICE under a new agency with a very different mission."
Her comments follow similar sentiments expressed by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., over the past week. In interviews with multiple outlets, she has said the government "maybe" or "probably" should "start from scratch" on an immigration-enforcement agency.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and is considering another run in 2020, has stopped short of his colleagues' calls to dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But he has been quick to note his vote opposing the 2002 law that paved the way for the agency to replace the old Immigration and Naturalization Service after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Housed within the Department of Homeland Security, the immigration-enforcement agency is in charge of enforcing hundreds of federal immigration statutes.
Republicans have described the idea of eliminating the agency as a radical cause and likened it to an advocacy of "open borders."
[U.S. immigration: Data visualization of selected immigration statistics, U.S. border map]
Information for this article was contributed by Robert Burns, Bill Barrow, Gillian Flaccus, Amy Taxin and Susan Montoya Bryan of The Associated Press; by Marissa J. Lang of The Washington Post; by Brent McDonald of The New York Times; and by Sahil Kapur of Bloomberg News.
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