The Trump administration is denying allegations that he plans on militarizing his deportation orders, after the Associated Press published a report leaked from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, that documented a proposal to do so. The memo obtained by the AP details plans to designate as many as 100,000 National Guard troops in 11 states identified to have the most dense concentration of unauthorized immigrants residing in them, should their elected leaders consent.
According to a most recent estimate provided by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of the immigrants determined to have settled in the U.S. illegally live among the collective populations of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. The 11-page document recovered by the AP confirms a Department of Home Land Security proposal having been drawn up to allow the listed states to invite the National Guard to round foreign nationals up by giving them the grounds "to perform the functions of an immigration officer in relation to the investigation, apprehension and detention of aliens in the United States."
While Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer rejected the notion that the administration plans on legislating such orders, telling reporters, “That is 100% not true. It is false," there is no denying the validity of the document. Statements issued by the DHS defend that while the report accessed by the AP has indeed been reviewed and considered, it was an early draft, and one that had not made it up to the highest ranks of the department's chain of command.
Back in 2012 the Obama administration scaled back it's federal-local partnership program that similarly enabled Washington to aid states, due to protests about the nature of the program to institute "racial profiling" as a mechanism for detaining targeted immigrants. The DHS report the AP has circulated, if enacted in a fashion similar to how it has been proposed, would essentially reinstate that fed-local partnership. It would also expedite the deportation process the President's executive order already has states authorizing local police, sheriff's deputies, and state troopers to seek out and detain non-citizens as a daily order of business.
Source: latimes.com
