2.7.03 @ 12:02AM
Pace Trent Lott, Bill O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin, there's no reason to use armed soldiers to enforce U.S. immigration law.
The U.S. military is the most effective fighting force in
history -- so effective, in fact, that politicians and pundits have
come to see it as a panacea for every security problem posed by the
terrorist threat. But on the home front there are many tasks for
which the military is ill-suited and where its deployment would be
ineffective and dangerous.
Nowhere is that clearer than with the growing calls to
militarize our borders. Politicians like Rep. Tom Tancredo (R.-Co.)
and Sen. Trent Lott (R.-Miss.) and conservative pundits like Bill
O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin want armed soldiers to enforce U.S.
immigration law. In her new bestseller Invasion: How America
Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to
Our Shores, Malkin writes that "at the northern border with
Canada...every rubber orange cone and measly 'No Entry' sign should
immediately be replaced with an armed National Guardsman." She
suggests that something in the neighborhood of 100,000 troops might
be appropriate.
The problem with this idea is that the same training that makes
U.S. soldiers outstanding warriors makes them extremely dangerous
as cops. Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense in
the Reagan administration, put it succinctly: The military "is
trained to vaporize, not Mirandize."
No one knows this better than the military establishment, which
is why the Pentagon has consistently resisted calls to station
troops on our borders, most recently in the spring of last year,
when Congress pushed for border militarization. Pentagon officials
raised the possibility of an "unlawful and potentially lethal use
of force incident" if the troops were armed.
Ultimately, some 1,600 National Guardsmen were placed at the
Mexican and Canadian borders for a six-month mission, most of them
unarmed. A Pentagon official told United Press International, "We
don't like to do these things. We do them as a matter of last
resort. That's why we entered into this undertaking with a specific
end date and a specific requirement."
The Pentagon was right to worry. U.S. troops have been placed on
the borders in the past, as part of the quixotic fight against drug
smuggling. Even though those deployments have been limited to
surveillance and support roles, they've led to tragedy. In 1997, a
Marine anti-drug patrol shot and killed 18-year-old high school
student Esquiel Hernandez, who was carrying a .22 caliber rifle
while tending goats on his own farm in Redford, Texas, near the
Mexican border. The Justice Department paid out $1.9 million to the
Hernandez family as settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit.
The Hernandez incident should be a cautionary tale for those who
seek to militarize our borders. An internal Pentagon investigation
of the incident noted that the soldiers were ill-prepared for
contact with civilians, as their military training instilled "an
aggressive spirit while teaching basic combat skills."
Because of the restrictions imposed by the Posse Comitatus Act,
the federal law that proscribes the military from "executing the
laws," the Marines who killed Hernandez operated under rules of
engagement that prevented them from arresting or otherwise directly
engaging civilians. Nonetheless, according to a senior FBI agent
involved with the case, "The Marines perceived a target-practicing
shot as a threat to their safety .... From that point, their
training and instincts took over to neutralize a threat." The
camouflaged Marines tailed Hernandez for 20 minutes, and failed to
identify themselves or try to defuse the situation. When Hernandez
raised his rifle again, a Marine shot him, and let him bleed to
death without attempting to administer first aid.
The new proposals to use troops for border patrol work would
greatly multiply the dangers revealed by the Hernandez incident.
Unlike the soldiers deployed for the drug war, the troops on border
patrol duty would be given arrest authority and allowed to directly
engage civilians. The danger to civilians wouldn't be limited to
border areas either, given that federal law allows the Border
Patrol to set up checkpoints as far as 100 miles inland from the
border or shoreline.
Having the military enforce the immigration laws isn't wise, it
isn't necessary, and it's not legal. Both the INS and the Border
Patrol are getting a half a billion dollar infusion of new
resources, and rapidly hiring new agents. If still more border
patrol personnel are needed, they should be hired. But border
security can be provided without eroding America's tradition of
civil-military separation.
topics:
Law, Military, Iran, Immigration
