Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has a message for those worried about US troops using lethal force at the border.
“They’re not even carrying guns — so just relax,” Mattis explained, speaking to reporters on Wednesday just hours after the White House issued its “use of force” order.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Mattis noted how the troops “are not doing law enforcement” and “do not have arrest authority.”
“There’s no violation of Posse Comitatus,” he said. “There’s no violation at all. We’re not going to arrest or anything else. To stop someone from beating on someone and turn them over to someone else — this is minutes, not even hours.”
While the Trump administration’s order ultimately expands the role of service members deployed in Texas, Arizona and California — by allowing them to carry out “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary)” — Mattis insisted that the original orders had not been altered.
“There has been no call for any lethal force from DHS [Department of Homeland Security],” he said. “There is no armed element going in. I will determine it based upon what DHS asks for and a mission analysis. And then when we do that, we’ll let you know what it is.”
Mattis said he would be reviewing the White House “cabinet order” — which was handed down Tuesday night and signed into effect Wednesday — to see what else it entails.
“It is not an unreasonable concern on the part of the president that we may have to back up Border Patrol,” Mattis said, citing reported clashes between migrants and Mexican police.
“I think part of this is just by putting in the crowd control barriers and the barbed wire,” he added. “So if we can keep the danger to the border police low by just putting in barbed wire, especially when people say they’re going to try to illegally cross the border, of course, we’d do it.”
Mattis, at one point, got asked about the safety of people living along the southern border — and whether they were facing a possible repeat of the 1997 incident involving Esequiel Hernández Jr., an 18-year-old Texan who was accidentally shot and killed by a US Marine while herding goats above the Rio Grande.
“I’m not going to dignify that,” Mattis replied. “They’re not even carrying guns for Christ’s sake.”