Posted on 10/22/2018 5:19:08 AM PDT by SJackson
A migrant caravan from Central America is currently heading en masse to the United States. Its members, several thousand strong, are intent on pouring into the U.S. in what amounts to an invasion force. President Trump has correctly branded the caravan an "onslaught" and an "assault on our country." The president has promised to use military troops if necessary to close the southern border with Mexico. He also threatened to cut off all foreign aid to those Central American countries that are not doing enough to stop the migration caravan in its tracks.
Members of the caravan have already demonstrated their violent streak during an early stage of their trek, as they approached Mexico. They “forced their way through Guatemala's northwestern border and flooded onto a bridge leading to Mexico,” AFP reported. These migrants, mainly from Honduras, engaged in violent clashes with Mexican riot police as they tried to surge through police lines and cross the bridge into Mexico. Four Mexican police officers were reportedly injured. "Violent entry into the country not only threatens our sovereignty, but also puts the migrants themselves at risk," Mexico’s President Pena Nieto said. "Mexico does not permit and will not permit entry into its territory in an irregular fashion, much less in a violent fashion."
Mexican government officials have said that Mexico would be willing to consider asylum requests from members of the caravan on an individual basis, with the assistance of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees (“UNHCR”). Mexico is proposing that UNCHR establish shelters along Mexico’s southern border with Central American countries. Individuals deemed by the UN agency to be eligible for asylum protection, presumably after performing its standard vetting, would be eligible for placement in a host country willing to accept them, which could be Mexico or the United States. Those deemed not to have a legitimate claim would be sent back to their home countries. If someone manages to slip through this system and travels through Mexico before crossing the Mexico-U.S. border into the United States, Mexico has indicated that it would be willing to accept the return of that individual if the U.S. so wishes. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States welcomed and would cooperate with Mexico’s initiative to have Central American migrants processed for possible asylum in Mexico first with UN assistance. The initiative conforms with international law on the handling of claims for refugee status and is an orderly and humane solution to the migration crisis that the caravan has precipitated.
However, the migrant invaders are impatient. “We are going to the United States,” said one of the migrants. “Nobody is going to stop us.” The Associated Press has reported that despite Mexico’s attempt to intervene, “a growing throng of Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early Sunday in southern Mexico.” Their numbers have reportedly grown, after migrants in the caravan decided not to submit to Mexico’s asylum process that would have enabled them to enter Mexico legally. Instead, they took the law into their own hands. Mexico now appears to have largely given up and is doing little to stop them.
The caravan migrants believe that they are entitled to simply pass through Mexico without any interference and ensconce themselves in the United States. A press release issued by the organizers of a similar migrant caravan earlier this year stated a “demand of Mexico and the United States” that “they open the borders to us because we are as much citizens as the people of the countries where we are and/or travel.” This “open borders” demand is a direct challenge to U.S. national sovereignty. Migrants are not entitled to insist upon a “right” to choose the United States as their destination country, including would-be asylum-seekers if they are offered the chance for asylum in Mexico first.
Some of the caravan migrants cry poverty and use children as shields while pleading their case. Others in the caravan have likely learned - from the migrants who preceded them and from open borders advocates encouraging their migration - the playbook of how to exploit the loophole-ridden U.S. immigration laws. They know that their sheer numbers will further overwhelm an already overstretched adjudicative process with many more amnesty claims. Once in this country, the migrants, especially those with children in tow, are likely to be released into the community-at-large, pending the outcome of their asylum hearings, which could take place years later. They may well skip their hearings altogether, as many before them have done, and remain free to live in our country at American taxpayers’ expense indefinitely. Other migrants in the caravan who manage to make it to the U.S. border will simply enter illegally at unguarded points without even the pretense of seeking asylum unless they can be stopped first. Terrorists and criminal gang members are free to take part in the caravan with little chance of detection.
President Trump has vowed to use the military to seal the southern border of the United States with Mexico, if necessary – a stretch of territory as long as 2000 miles. Aside from logistical issues, questions have been raised as to whether the president has the legal authority to take such action in enforcing U.S. immigration laws, at least with respect to utilizing active-duty members of the army, navy, air force and marines. Those who claim that the president does not have such authority cite the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, as amended from time to time, which prohibits active duty military troops from executing the country’s laws unless expressly authorized by the Constitution or an Act of Congress. This statute does not apply to the National Guard operating under state authority.
A federal court has held that the Posse Comitatus Act “makes unlawful the use of federal military troops in an active role of direct law enforcement by civil law enforcement officers,” which includes “arrest; seizure of evidence; search of a person; search of a building; investigation of crime; interviewing witnesses; pursuit of an escaped civilian prisoner; search of an area for a suspect or other like activities.” Military personnel can do little more than maintain border fences and vehicles and perhaps also assist with surveillance, including in connection with drugs smuggling, if the Posse Comitatus Act is interpreted as restrictively as open borders proponents are likely to advocate in court.
However, repelling an organized force of unvetted migrants, who may include terrorists and foreign criminal gang members, from entering this country in the first place is not simply civil domestic law enforcement. It is a military response to a genuine threat to U.S. territorial sovereignty and national security originating from foreign territories. The military response would be directed by the president of the United States who is vested with the constitutional authority of commander in chief. The president would be using the military to implement the constitutional mandate of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution that the “United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.”
Moreover, the Posse Comitatus Act was intended to protect Americans within the boundaries of the United States from military rule. Its original purpose was to put an end to the use of federal troops to police state elections in the ex-Confederate states where the civil power had been reestablished. As one federal court stated, the Posse Comitatus Act is “the type of criminal statute which is properly presumed to have no extraterritorial application in the absence of statutory language indicating a contrary intent.” There is nothing in either the legislative history or text of the Posse Comitatus Act.to indicate that its drafters intended to prohibit the president’s use of military troops to block aliens gathered together in a horde from attempting to cross into our country after having violently clashed with the police of another country en route and having willfully evaded that country's laws. Terrorists may well be concealing themselves in the migrant caravan. Hezbollah, for example, has already managed to penetrate the U.S. border with Mexico, posing a serious national security threat.
The Supreme Court recently upheld the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order limiting the entry of aliens from certain countries on national security grounds, pending a thorough review of the vetting process. The Court relied on §1182(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which enables the President to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever he “finds” that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
Analogously, if the president determines that it is necessary to use active members of the military to enforce federal authority in situations he deems potentially dangerous to national security, there is a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act which should allow him to do just that (10 U.S.C. § 332, renumbered §252). This provision states that the president may “use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary,” to enforce “the laws of the United States” whenever he “considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages” make it “impracticable” to enforce such laws “by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” The migrant caravan aimed at entering the United States is an “assemblage” by definition. This assemblage has already acted unlawfully in violent clashes with Mexican riot police, after which some members then entered Mexico illegally despite being given the chance to submit to a legal process for asylum claims. U.S. border enforcement officials have already been overwhelmed by the number of illegal aliens and would-be asylum seekers from Central America. The current migration caravan will further burden the adjudicative system for amnesty hearings to the point of implosion.
President Trump tweeted on Sunday: “Full efforts are being made to stop the onslaught of illegal aliens from crossing our Southern Border. People have to apply for asylum in Mexico first, and if they fail to do that, the U.S. will turn them away.” If he needs the military to protect the border from the migrant caravan invasion, so be it.
I believe the Defense Authorization Act of 2015 (not sue of date) specifically permit POTUS to use the military in defense of a[-our borders - invasion is not the same as migration. If those were the same, then there is nothing to stop any foreign power from sending its troops into the US since they could simply claim they are immigrants.
The author conflates invasion with immigration to garner sympathy and to rose public opinion against POTUS and use of the US military to protect the country from invasion and maintain the security of the US.
A handful of people crossing the border could be immigrants - 10,000 or more waving flags of other nations is an invasion, regardless of the women and children being used as shields (like Saddam did before Gulf 1).
If he needs the military to protect the border from the migrant caravan invasion, so be it.
As they say, where there’s a Willa there’s a way. 8>)
You don’t have to shoot them, just make temporary camp
The question is how much resources do you want to tie up along the border and for how long? Camps mean an indefinite time as there are always more arriving, live fire means it over with in a day or less with no more coming.
Posse comitus does not apply to American forces defending the border from positions inside the failed Mexican state. The posse comitas act does not prevet the use of American troops within the occupied state of Hondouras where a military occupation government has been established.
The US Marines have a long and successful history of operations in central America, including the capture and occupation of the Halls of Montezuma during the presidency of James K Polk. The successful establishment and operatio of a military government has precedent in Japan.
Hizbollah is. It's fair to describe them as a foreign power as well as a terror group given their control of Lebanon and decades of actions as an Iranian proxy. Including in our hemisphere
Capture every mothers son of them that step on us soil
Put the prisoners of war to work on the Wall.
See how easy?
Yes, their financiers. We hear very little about them. I always thought financing criminal activity was illegal.
No, they lack the skills to build the wall.
Pack them into trailers and haul them back to Occupied Hondouras
From where the invaders just busted into Mexico I make it as approximately 1140 miles to even just the southern tip of Texas. The invaders seem to be walking - at least in all the pictures we've been allowed to see so far. Even at a *very* aggressive 20 miles per day that's 55+ days or mid December before they hit the border. 20 miles a day walking is probably very optimistic. They have to set up and break camp each day, carry what few possessions they are bringing with (other than an appetite for democratic handouts), forage for food and water, etc. More likely on foot over long distances like this they are not even making 10 miles per day.
Maybe they are getting motorized transport we're not seeing? Even just a couple dozen buses could run in relays and move them 40 or 50 miles in a day.
Or maybe the plan is to force a crisis before they reach the border. "Oh look, thousands of stranded refugees, we *must* help them!..."
If President Trump deploys the military to repel this invasion - as he not only should but must... Then he will cement a mid-term sweep for Republicans and his second term. Besides, it would be worth the cost of the deployment just to see liberals' heads come off, spin around, then explode.
The problem is that the money comes from corporations owned by corporations owned by corporations owned by corporations.
Repel this crap invaders with tear gas etc. Get our military down on the Border to take care of this. Our military can disrupt the cartels and their communications.
I would start send them down this week. Get them briefed and ready. We need a large permanent Army base near the Mexican border. Call it the military HQ to coordinate and keep invaders from entering.
To rally Democrat voters and achieve a "Blue Wave"
Soros and the rest of the commies have staged this to create an incident where American troops/police will be forced to use deadly force to stop the invasion. They are hoping for a significant loss of life, all dutifully recorded live by the MSM, to create another “Kent State” narrative.
If the Wall gets built, and I pray that it will, some judge will issue an Order that any “migrant” who so much as touches the wall is now on US soil. They would therefore be entitled to claim asylum and cross the wall until they have exhausted the “refugee” application and appeal process. The left hates America and will use every weapon in their arsenal to destroy it.
1000’s of people crashing and then wanting free govt services (remember how much each student costs). In addition, there are probably 500 gang members in that crowd. Imagine how much violence they will cause
Yet all the news can talk about is the Turkish journalist killed by the Saudis
baloney, others will go around. it’s a huge border and as word gets to thru the mob they make other plans for groups of it.
but if it makes you feel safe keep posting these things - like the heat dish on the truck i’s just a deterrent - but we need solid way to keep them out.
Yeah, but the example holds - please don’t minimize it or change the subject. Hezbollah is not storming our border with 10,000 troops at the moment.
Isn’t this sort of thing exactly why we have a military, to begin with? Aren’t they supposed to protect our borders from an invasion?
That these people may not be carrying weapons, it sure looks like an invasion force to me. The army is there to protect the homeland from exactly this sort of thing. Posse Comitatus is for use against American citizens, not foreign invaders.
Posse comitus does not apply to American forces operating in Mexico
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