While Trump is planning on arming troops to protect any border patrol agents being assaulted by violent immigrants, Politico is reporting all 5,800 troops who were rushed to the southwest border amid Trump’s warnings of an invasion before the midterm election will be home for Christmas.
Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan said in an interview Monday: “Our end date right now is 15 December, and I’ve got no indications from anybody that we’ll go beyond that.”
His comments resulted in three critics with military and national security experience – Gordon Adams, Lawrence Wilkerson, and Isaiah Wilson III writing in the New York Times: “The president used America’s military forces not against any real threat but as toy soldiers, with the intent of manipulating a domestic midterm election outcome, an unprecedented use of the military by a sitting president.”
In a retort to the Times article, U.S. Army North issued a brief statement on Tuesday insisting that “no specific time line for redeployment has been determined.” The whole issue of the deployment of troops to our Southern border has been questioned, and rightly so.
Buchanan confirmed previous reports that the military had rejected a request from the Department of Homeland Security to use troops to back up border agents in the event of a violent confrontation. “That is a law enforcement task, and the secretary of Defense does not have the authority to approve that inside the homeland,” Buchanan said.
Trump’s Force Protection Mandate
President Trump is now expected to give troops on the border the authority to protect Customs and Border Protection personnel if they are attacked by migrants crossing into the country.
The directive from Trump will stipulate that any use of force by the troops must be “proportional.” DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen reportedly has asked Trump to allow for armed troops to protect border agents, perhaps because she has been on the President’s “Short List.” Trump is ready to fire Nielsen because he says she is not “tough enough” in implementing his immigration agenda.
“As Secretary Nielsen has said, we will not allow our frontline personnel to be in harm’s way. We will do everything we can to protect those who defend our nation’s sovereignty and secure our border. We appreciate the Department of Defense stepping in to assist the Department of Homeland Security as needed,” said DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman.
