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Trump’s plan to use the military to build and run migrant detention camps on US soil is illegal, but that is what the White House has wanted to do.

NBC News reported:
When some of President Donald Trump’s top national security advisers gathered at the White House Tuesday night to talk about the surge of immigrants across the southern border, they discussed increasing the U.S. military’s involvement in the border mission, including whether the military could be used to build tent city detention camps for migrants, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the conversations.

During the meeting, the officials also discussed whether the U.S. military could legally run the camps once the migrants are housed there, a move the three officials said was very unlikely since U.S. law prohibits the military from directly interacting with migrants. The law has been a major limitation for Trump, who wants to engage troops in his mission to get tougher on immigration.

Video explaining the illegality of Trump’s plan:

Trump's plan of using the military to run migrant tent detention camps is the height of illegality. https://t.co/4lrxpLPFLi pic.twitter.com/ekBZmIySz6

— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) April 12, 2019

Trump sees immigrants as foreign invaders

The mindset behind Trump’s thinking is that immigrant children are the same as an invading foreign army. The White House consistently talks about immigration in terms of crisis and invasion. The false equivalency of migrants fleeing their home country due to violence and poverty of that to a foreign army is the heart and soul of the president’s racist immigration policies.

Throughout US history there have always been political figures who demonized immigrants as a that were coming to “destroy American life.”

Donald Trump and his administration have no respect for the law, but using the military in an illegal law enforcement operation on US soil is a rich a turn of events from a Republican Party that spent eight years freaking out Obama executive overreach.

Trump’s authoritarian and illegal impulses are constant, and they need to be checked every single day to protect US democracy.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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