Donald Trump Signs Authorization For Border Troops To Use Lethal Force As Migrant Caravan Approaches
As 400 military police officers from the U.S. Army redeployed to San Diego, the Trump administration approved the use of troops for law enforcement tasks at the southern border, stating that they are permitted to employ lethal force, according to a White House memo obtained by Newsweek.
The “decision memorandum” was signed by President Donald Trump on Tuesday and ran through Derek S. Lyons, a Harvard-educated lawyer and White House staff secretary to John Kelly, the White House chief of staff and former U.S. Marine general. The documents were obtained from a Defense Department source.
Kelly signed the memo late Tuesday authorizing U.S. service members to perform “military protective activities,” allowing service members to use “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention, and cursory search,” as determined by Defense Secretary James Mattis to protect agents with Customs and Border Protection (CPB).
“Anybody throwing stones, rocks, like they did to Mexico and the Mexican military, Mexican police, where they badly hurt police and soldiers of Mexico, we will consider that a firearm,” Trump said. “We’re not going to put up with that. They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. I told them to consider it a rifle.”
