Troops to the Mexican Border?

 U.S. Army patrol along the Mexican border (in this case artillery in the field), in 1916.

I woke up to the news recently (this post was a draft for a while) that President Trump, in frustration with there being no progress on his campaign promise to build a wall along the Mexican border, has determined to patrol it with the military.

What this means wasn't exactly clear.  According to the broadcast television news, the proposal was to patrol it with, as stated, "the military".  According to the New York Times, the proposal was to patrol it with the National Guard.  We now know that the proposal is to patrol the border with 2,000 to 4,000 National Guardsmen, presumably drawn from the border states (although that isn't exactly clear).  If the Guardsmen are all drawn from the border states we can presume that we're now set up for a contest between California Governor Jerry Brown and the President Trump.

This puts a a blog like this one into sort of a unique position as we deal here with the Mexican border a lot. . . .albeit the Mexican border in in the 1910s. . . not so much the 2010s.  Anyhow, maybe we're nearly relevant . . . or not.

Before we go further, we should mention the legality aspect of it.  The military can't be used as a police force under what some people like to call the Posse Comitatus Act, mostly because that's fun to say. The original text of the act stated:

Sec. 15. From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section and any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment.

In spite of this text, the US military has been active on the border numerous times since the 1878 passing of this act, which was designed to keep the Army from being used again for something like Reconstruction.  It was, basically, part of the deal the GOP made with the South to end Reconstruction, and while I'll be perfectly frank that I feel that Reconstruction didn't go anywhere far enough, and was ended too soon, I'm sympathetic with the underlying point of the act. We really don't want soldiers acting as police or in policing roles.  For that matter, I'm not too keen on the modern trend of the militarization of the police which I think has gone way too far.  Policemen are not soldiers and vice versa, and their roles shouldn't cross.

 Extremely strange allegorical print on Reconstruction from 1867.  I'll be frank that in my view Reconstruction didn't go far enough, by a long shot.  The use of the Army in Reconstruction, which was necessary, did prove to be a major issue with Southerners after they got over the fact that they'd lost the war.

Anyhow, be that as it may, the active duty and the military have both been used, even in recent years, on the border in various roles, so this isn't that much of a departure from what's occurred both in the past and in fact recently.  That doesn't make it a good idea, it just means it isn't that novel.

It might surprise folks to know that at one time the U.S. military did in fact act as the Border Patrol, more or less, legal problems to that notwithstanding.  It was one of the two policing roles done by the U.S. Army in the past that it started to pull out of, due to the creation of other agencies, in the 10s and 20s.  The other prominent one was the patrol of the National Parks, which was an Army function.  That ended in the teens with the creation of the National Park Service and that's why, FWIW, Park Service uniforms strongly recall the Army's uniform of that era.

 Mexican migrant in 1912 near Laredo, Texas, before there were any real controls at all, but just at the time concern was beginning to build due to the increase of migrants caused by the Mexican Revolution.

The story about the border is a bit different.  The Army, combined with various state police forces, and during the crisis with Mexico the National Guard and at least the Texas State Guard patrolled the border and acted basically as the Border Patrol.   The Border Patrol itself was authorized on May 28, 1924 and started operating that June.  But it didn't replace the Army completely until after World War Two.  In the latter years, including on into World War Two, cavalry patrolled the border once again, in partial fear of which way Mexico may have decided to go during the war until Mexico entered the war on the Allied side. Beyond that, however, the last of the Apache Scouts, a mere handful of men, continued to patrol the border in a role that they'd had since the late 19th Century and which crossed the military/police line, with no apparent concern regarding that. 

Authorities, likely a Border Patrol officer and a railroad detective, checking boxcars for illegal Mexican migrants in 1938.  The Great Depression caused the United States to reduce the number of legal migrants considerably and to greatly increase immigration enforcement in general.

Following World War Two that ended and only in the last couple of decades has that occasionally been reversed.  That's always accompanied by assurances that the military is being used in a "support" rather than policing role, but the distinction can get blurred and things can occur.  A couple of decades ago, for example, a U.S. Marine shot and killed a teenage goat herder along the border when the Marine was deployed on some sort of drug smuggling interdiction mission.  Ironically, both were U.S. citizens and both were Hispanic, which I suppose may provide some sort of additional message but which is truly tragic.

The National Guard has been called out by at least of the border states, Arizona, to patrol the border in what amounted to a bit of a protest during President Obama's administration.  The Texas State Guard, which of course is a State Guard not the National Guard (I've dealt with State Guards in other posts) had a long border patrol mission of some sort in the last decade which was under reported (I knew a fellow in the Texas State Guard so I knew a little about that at the time).  The Texas State Guard, readers here will recall, also patrolled the border during World War One after the National Guard had been Federalized, in a mission that supported the Army on the Mexican border.

Are these missions effective?  Well, I suppose you'd have to look at each one to know the answer.  In prior eras when the border was truly wide open they probably were more effective than not doing anything.  Now, however, what this would seem to suggest is that there's a crisis going on and the Border Patrol is understaffed.  The Border Patrol, however, has been hiring during the Trump Administration and if its understaffed, it shouldn't be for much longer.  And illegal crossings are at their lowest point since the 1970s, a trend line that started during the Obama Administration.  The Trump Administration claims that within the last month there's been a 200% increase in crossings, which may be true but would raise the question as to why that's the case.  In the immediate term, however, we now live in an era in which more Mexicans return to Mexico than enter the United States.

Who will go, from the Guard? Well, maybe nobody. The promise is to call up that number of Guardsmen, but it hasn't happened yet.  If it does, it's likely to be the Guard from the border states although a Trump spokesman says he expected the majority of Governor's to support this task and send their Guards.  The entire Guard hasn't served on the border since 1916-17, and that's not going to happen now.  Indeed, that would be a huge deployment.  But that would suggest that they'll ask for support troops in small numbers, perhaps helicopter crews or something.

Is it necessary? That's definitely debatable.  If there's a huge serge in crossings, perhaps it is, on a temporary basis.  But so far, I haven't heard the story behind the numbers.  Unfortunately, if that's correct, it's an immediate need as its occurring now, prior to the annual spring increase in illegal crossings (truly, there is such a thing), but then if that's the need, the Guard isn't likely to be able to help, as they'd have to be deployed right now, which won't happen.