A leaked Department of Homeland Security internal memo obtained by The New Republic shows the Trump administration is pushing for a massive deployment of military troops for domestic law enforement targeting immigrants in America’s largest cities.
This should worry everyone.
The memo was written by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s younger brother Phil, a senior adviser to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and DHS liaison officer to the Defense Department.Phil, whose experience includes founding his own podcast production company and working on social media and podcasts at The Hudson Institute, is pushing a narrative that drug cartels and other criminal elements are the number one threat to national security, akin to “Al Qaeda or ISIS cells and fighters operating freely inside America,” never mind the real and present dangers countries like Russia or China pose. And despite Trump and the GOP’s budget increasing ICE spending more than $170 billion over four years to supercharge the administration’s mass deportation plans, not to mention DHS recently lowering the age limit to 18 for ICE recruits, that’s not enough.This administration wants military boots on domestic soil deployed to fight illegal immigration.
“The memo is alarming, because it speaks to the intent to use the military within the United States at a level not seen since Japanese internment,” Carrie Lee, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent. “The military is the most powerful, coercive tool our country has. We don’t want the military doing law enforcement. It absolutely undermines the rule of law.”
That may in fact be the point.
This Homeland security memo is actually a manifestation of Project 2025’s telegraphed takeover plans for our military, starting with a decapitation of leadership and an outlined witch hunt to root out leadership who would put their allegiance to the constitution over Trump and the MAGA agenda. The number of problems with this thinking are too numerous for one essay; suffice it to say, it threatens the very core of military readiness world-wide, and undermines the only oath of military service, to defend the Constitution. Our previous Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, addressed the American public after federal forces were employed against American citizens exercising their Constitutional rights at Washington D.C’s Lafayette Square. Mattis declared that Trump was the first president who has no interest in uniting the American people, and had no interest even in the appearance of unity. Some of America’s greatest military heroes have felt it was their duty to warn us. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, told us that Trump is a Fascist to the core. Senator, and POW, John McCain, told us that the president of the United States went to Helsinki and abased himself in front of a tyrant.
It is too early to tell if our current Chairman, General Dan Caine, will have the same sense of duty to the Constitution to prevent the mission creep that has already started: National Guard and Marines deployed to Los Angeles, a judge in Wisconsin arrested, the mayor of Newark arrested, members of Congress arrested, a four-year-old with stage-four-cancer deported, and last week, Afghan interpreters, who served alongside our military in combat, arrested and facing deportation to certain torture and probably murder. These are the types of moral injuries we are about to subject military members to – then it will slowly degrade, first the morale, and then the military capabilities of our fighting force.
PHOTO ESSAY: Trump’s Militarized War on Immigrants Meets Citizen Resistance in Los Angeles
So here we sit at the crossroads of history and a turning point for the country – this question of whether to turn our military into something it was designed never to be – law enforcement against its own citizens. And it is being done deliberately, methodically and cleverly. By resurrecting the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, designed for a foreign invasion, military leadership is being persuaded that these are legal orders. The strategy is three-fold. One, drug cartels are being designated as terrorist organizations on par with Al Qaeda or ISIS. Two, the military can be used to combat illegal immigration, or even protests, as domestic terrorism threats under the guise of for national security. Three, according to the Supreme Court, all of POTUS’s orders are above scrutiny as long as he’s performing an “official act.” Lest any flag officer question the legality of President Trump’s orders, Defense Secretary Hegseth is telling the Pentagon that this is the official policy of the Commander in Chief.
Joseph Nunn, counsel for the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center, put it best when he told The New Republic’s Sargent:
“Normalizing routine military support to law enforcement could create a kind of domestic ‘forever war,’ but one that is uniquely dangerous. As the Founders well understood, a military that is turned inward is a threat to both democracy and individual liberty.”
