Editor’s note—A version of this post was originally published by The Hill.
The Trump administration has begun executing its plan to use active-duty military to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, following an executive order President Trump signed on his first day in office and another executive order declaring a state of emergency along the southern border. In accordance with this order, 1,500 NORTHCOM troops have been deployed to support actions by Customs and Border Patrol in a variety of tasks. Military aircraft and crews are flying deportation excursions, and service members are under orders to support the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to obtain “complete operational control of the southern border of the United States.”
President Trump also ordered the military to assist in identifying and developing adequate detention space as federal agencies work through vexing logistical and diplomatic hurdles. To that end, the President has directed the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to prepare a 30,000-person migrant facility at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, a United States military prison within Naval Station Guantánamo Bay on the Cuban coast which many Americans know as the holding area for known and suspected 9/11 attackers and other military prisoners.
The accelerated pacing of this operation along with unilateral White House action has eclipsed any meaningful debate over the costs of such an operation, both monetary and the more difficult to quantify human costs. Deploying the military to detain and deport millions of men, women, and children will inflict cruelty and pain on the affected families. But there will be other, less obvious costs of this ill-conceived plan. Pressing regular military troops into service to help effectuate such a massive deportation effort will likely damage the morale, reputation, health, and readiness of our nation’s armed forces.
Americans have historically drawn a sharp line between military and civilian authority. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution had lived through a time when the British military intruded into civilian affairs to the point of suppressing free speech, depriving people of their right to bear arms, dispersing public assembly, quartering soldiers in private homes without consent, and performing unreasonable search and seizure.
The Bill of Rights was designed to ensure that the new republic’s military forces would never subject civilians to such practices. The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act specifically forbids military participation in law enforcement without Congressional approval.
In a 2024 policy report prepared for the Brennan Center for Social Justice, Joseph Nunn, a legal scholar who focuses on domestic activities of the U.S. military, traces “… centuries-long tradition and fundamental legal principles [which] dictate that responsibility for civilian law enforcement should presumptively rest in the hands of civilian authorities.” These date back to at least the Magna Carta. He also provides an edifying modern example of what can go wrong if this principle is ignored:
In May 1992, seven U.S. Marines joined two local police officers as they responded to a domestic violence call in the waning days of the Los Angeles riots. Deployed to the city alongside several thousand other federal troops after President George H. W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, these Marines now found themselves playing a role for which they had little training (italics added): that of civilian law enforcement officer.
… One of the officers shouted to the Marines, “Cover me” — a request, in law enforcement parlance, that they raise their weapons and be ready to fire if necessary. But the Marines, in accordance with their own training, took it as a request for suppressing fire. They riddled the home with more than 200 bullets. Miraculously, no one was killed.
The multiple statues of the Insurrection Act provide a recognized exception to the Posse Comitatus Act.[1] Its first iteration was legislated by Congress in 1792 to enable President Washington to call up and direct state militias in response to the Whiskey Rebellion (1791-1794), known at that time as the Whiskey Insurrection. A new law was needed because the limits the Founders had set on governmental power proved to inhibit decisive action in times of crisis. The 1792 law was set to expire in two years but, as Nunn explains, when President Washington personally led the Federal force in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, he acted with such restraint and discretion that Congress grew comfortable with weakening the guardrails which the Founders had designed to prevent a rogue President from using the military to seize and abuse presidential power. The revised Insurrection Act of 1795 empowered presidents to call up the military to deal with a defined set of critical events, including domestic crises. Since then, no President has very obviously flaunted that power, but the Insurrection Act has nevertheless evolved over the centuries to afford the President almost boundless flexibility in unilaterally directing the military to intervene in a civilian crisis. For this reason, Nunn deems the Insurrection Act to be “the most dangerous law in America.”
As a former career Army medical officer and a retired Veterans Affairs (VA) psychiatrist with decades of clinical and policy experience, ranging from psychotherapy with World War II ex-Prisoners of War (POWs) to the evaluation of Guantánamo detainees, we strongly caution against employing the military to detain and deport immigrants.
Twenty years of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us that effective operations of this type require situational awareness and expert planning for the management and care of the targeted population. We have learned first-hand that ordering service members to perform policing duties in ambiguous situations without adequate training, leadership, and support creates serious mental as well as physical health risks for those they detain as well as for the service members themselves.
Deploying the military to set up and operate detention facilities and their required logistical and medical support precipitates chaos and confusion. As medical experts with decades of clinical and policy experience in working with military members and veterans, we call attention to lessons learned from prior deployments and foreseeable challenges which the legal umbrella provided by the Insurrection Act will do nothing to mitigate and may, in fact, make worse.
Military assistance in civilian matters and operating encampments of detained civilians will likely create cognitive dissonance for combat units and service members, resulting in elevated levels of operational stress, moral injury, and misconduct. Setting up and operating large detention camps is extremely challenging on multiple levels. Encampments have restrictive rules of force, as demonstrated during foreign peacekeeping missions. The military service members involved may be exposed to violence, chaos, and flashpoints such as detainee-on-detainee violence or attempts by U.S. citizens (individually or as private militias) to intervene as vigilantes.
Appropriate training and field experience in police operations is essential in maintaining the dignity, self-respect, and wellbeing of both the detainees and those detaining them. Operating encampments of immigrants with children and families requires a high order of military professionalism, ethical medical care, and comprehensive support services within the context of a well-run law enforcement setting. There is, however, an insufficient number of experienced military police brigades to conduct a mission of the proposed nature, scope, and complexity. Infantry, Armor, and Field Artillery units could be assigned to augment the workforce but lack the necessary training. Without adequate preparation, service members, including medical staff, will be unable to properly fulfill their duties and responsibilities. Both they and those under their charge will be placed at significant and unnecessary risk.
Even correctional staff who have worked effectively in prisons are unprepared for the environmental and emotional challenges to be encountered in large encampments of mixed genders, ages, cultures, and English-speaking ability. In situations in which there are no individual cells or cell blocks, but, rather, hundreds or thousands of individuals are sharing common spaces, even experienced correctional staff may reasonably fear for their own safety. We have witnessed that this fear predictably leads to unsafe and unethical behavior.
Abu Ghraib provides a glaring example. A mix of active-duty troops, reserves troops, and private contractors operated within an inadequate facility in which lines of responsibility and authority were blurred and subject to informal relationships between the parties. Ultimate accountability for degrading and injurious behavior inflicted on detainees (as well as subsequent finger-pointing in the media) fell on front-line military service members who lacked adequate training, leadership, or support.
Medical support for this operation would likely be tasked to the Army National Guard or Reserve forces with additional assistance from active-duty Brigade Combat Teams. These units do not routinely perform encampment or detainee missions and are not trained for holding men, women, and families on U.S. soil.
Military medical staff, while essential in detainee operations, may be de-skilled in such situations and fail to uphold ethical practices. This was sadly demonstrated when military psychologists were drawn into interrogation efforts at Guantánamo. Although these health professionals began with the intent of saving lives and ensuring national security, they ultimately violated the basic clinical principle of doing no harm to those under their care.
Military medical personnel are uniquely stressed by missions of this nature and are at increased risk for post-traumatic stress disorder and associated conditions because of their participation. High rates of burnout were observed among military medical staff who provided support in civilian settings during the recent pandemic. Research shows that participation in such missions was associated with worsening mental health and increased thoughts of suicide.
To assemble the needed detention workforce, other government agencies would be required to detail personnel to the effort. Tasking staff to operate outside their primary occupations, organizational structures, and agency cultures is problematic. These hastily deployed augmentees would be further challenged by the complexity inherent in detaining adults, children, the elderly, and entire family units.
While medical support for the encampments could be contracted to private companies that supplement the Bureau of Prisons, these contractors have been widely criticized for failing to maintain basic standards of care. The proposed encampments will require even higher levels of care to meet a broad range of pre-existing medical needs and prevent major outbreaks of infectious diseases.
We are reminded of observations and comments that United States Public Health Service operations were severely disrupted when many of their behavioral health providers were assigned to backfill Army positions to support degraded clinical services. Military medical systems (both those within military treatment facilities and those embedded within military units) are already stretched thin. Reassigning military medical personnel to detention centers would profoundly impair normal military medical operations and cripple readiness for combat or humanitarian deployments.
The Department of Veterans Affairs medical system could be tapped to augment military medical professionals in detention operations but it is already struggling under an historic budgetary crisis and reductions in staff which limit its ability to back up the military in the event of war and the community in the wake of disaster as required under the National Disaster Medical System. It would be unwise (and unethical) to further encumber it with a task that undermines its mission of supporting the health of veterans, the military, and the community.
At a time when our military faces global threats and is challenged by a recruiting crisis, this mission would further stretch and stress our armed forces by requiring them to take on roles outside their scope and purpose. Converting existing military bases to confine detainees would also disrupt normal military operations and adversely impact readiness.
The men and women of our all-volunteer force have pledged their lives to defend our people and our values. They are ethical professionals driven by a high standard of service to others. It is ethics and high morale, rather than orders, which impel a war fighter to step outside the safety of a foxhole to save a comrade or accomplish a mission. In ordering our military to detain millions of men, women, and children, we expose them to challenges capable of undermining their purpose and cohesion as a fighting force.
Military experts are currently debating the question of whether a service member is legally obligated to obey an order which that service member considers to be immoral. Decades of clinical experience with service members and veterans who have participated in both combat and humanitarian operations have made us profoundly aware of the lingering impact of moral injury. Those who believe they have perpetrated, failed to prevent, or merely witnessed atrocious acts or events are at risk for intense and persistent feelings of shame, guilt, and worthlessness. These, in turn, often lead to social isolation, family breakdown, unemployment, and homelessness. They may also complicate other mental health problems including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance use, traumatic brain injury, and suicidality.
We are not qualified to comment on whether it is legal for a service member to disobey an order on moral grounds. It could easily be argued that if service members are required to endanger their bodies in the performance of their duties, they are also required to obey orders that endanger their minds. Our response stems from clinical rather than legal or ethical expertise: As health professionals and fellow citizens, we have a duty to foresee and prevent the profound suffering and downward spiral associated with moral injury. Our aim is to prevent serious but avoidable medical consequences.
The nation can neither ensure its security nor maintain its fighting force by violating the principles which define the relationship between its military and civilian populations. This social contract is foundational to our democracy and enshrined in our laws and culture. Beyond this, we have learned painful lessons about “going to war with the Army we have.” We do not need to repeat this mistake.
Stephen N. Xenakis, M.D., Brigadier General (Ret.), U.S. Army is a psychiatrist and a member of the Executive Board of the Center for Ethics and Rule of Law.
Harold S. Kudler, M.D., is a retired Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist who served as VA’s Chief Consultant for Mental Health and co-led development of the VA/Department of Defense Clinical Practice Guideline for Management of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
Image: Wangkun Jia/stock.adobe.com
[1] The five statutes are the Calling Forth Act of 1792, ch. 28, 1 Militia Act of 1795, ch. 36, 1 Stat. 424 (repealed in part 1861 and c 331-335 [2000]); the Insurrection Act of 1807, ch. 39, 2 Stat. 443 (331-335 [2000]); the Suppression of the Rebellion Act of 1861, version at 10 U.S. Code 331-335 [2000]); and specific parts of the Act of 1871, ch. 22, 3-4, 17 Stat. 13, 14-15 (expired in part 18 U.S. Code 333).