Purge Update: Administration Toying With Deploying National Guard To Hunt Down Immigrants

It's time to take these people literally. Immigrants, regardless of status, have already been forced to.

At some point, we might need more from homey on the right than just a whistle. (Generated by IJG JPEG Library)

At some point, we might need more from homey on the right than just a whistle. (Generated by IJG JPEG Library)

It’s difficult to express how terrifying it is to be an immigrant, or the family member of an immigrant, or somebody who just looks “foreign born” right now. Like, we’ve all read the stories. The horror stories. Immigrants hiding in churches, like they are deformed creatures in a Victor Hugo novel. ICE entrapping a woman at her domestic abuse hearing, after her allegedly abusive boyfriend dimed her out. You all think the Trump press conference was “unhinged”? ICE is out here in these streets straight terrorizing people. If this crap was happening to white people, there’d be riots — not “protests,” actual freaking riots.

Maybe there will be riots, regardless.

The Associated Press got a hold of a draft memo that’s apparently made the rounds at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. In it, the Trump Administration contemplates activating the National Guard in 11 states to round up unauthorized immigrants.

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 President Donald Trump signed Jan. 25. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.

Also dated Jan. 25, the draft memo 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 unauthorized immigrants.

White House press gaslighter Sean Spicer said, today, that the AP report is “100 percent not true.” Which should scare the hell out of you because Sean Spicer is 100 percent not credible. Playground “opposite day” rules apply to anything Spicer sock-puppets.

Militarizing immigration enforcement seems to be exactly what this administration wants. They’d make the cops do it, but federalism gets in their way. The Tenth Amendment gets in their way. Activating the National Guard is the next logical step if you want to round up brown mothers with tanks.

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The 11 states mentioned in the memo are California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas (which share a border with Mexico), and Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. Cleverly, the memo contemplates leaving control of the National Guard/deportation force in the hands of the state governors, which spreads out the blame. It also makes legal challenges more difficult. As I understand it, the Posse Comitatus Act — which limits the President’s ability to turn the military into domestic police — applies only to certain forces under federal control.

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.

Allowing Guard troops to operate inside non-border states also would go far beyond past deployments.

At the point where National Guard troops are in your town rounding up your friends and neighbors, I don’t know how you fight that legally, or at least I don’t know how you fight that only legally. I think we move beyond “filing injunctions” and move towards “lying down in the street in front of a tank.” Right? Either you hide some undocumented people in your walls, or you belong to the same side of history as the Nazi sympathizers.

At some point, the remaining decent people in this nation have to rise up against the occupying force of Trumpism. This memo shows that the White House is considering putting “boots on the ground” to conduct their war against American ideals.

Trump isn’t an irascible game show host. He’s not funny. He is a warlord who is terrorizing people based on the color of their skin and their nation of origin.

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It’s time to take these people literally. Immigrants, regardless of status, have already been forced to.

AP Exclusive: DHS weighed Nat Guard for immigration roundups [Associated Press]

Earlier: We Are Now In A Cold Civil War


Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.