Key points:
- President Trump’s use of military force in immigration enforcement threatens constitutional balance and civil liberties.
- Leaked DHS memo reveals plan to use military personnel in immigration operations in US cities like Los Angeles.
- The Trump administration equates immigrant communities with terrorist cells nationwide.
President Trump’s growing use of military force in immigration enforcement is a dangerous erosion of the line between civilian and military authority—one that threatens the constitutional balance and civil liberties at the heart of American democracy.
A newly leaked Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by The New Republic, combined with recent federal court rulings and press coverage of indiscriminate enforcement in Los Angeles, reveals a chilling effort to use military force against civilian populations under the pretext of immigration control.
The memo urges senior Pentagon leaders to deepen cooperation with DHS on immigration operations—not just at the southern border, but in cities like Los Angeles. It calls for military personnel to be detailed inside Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to support planning and operational logistics. It praises recent military-style raids in Los Angeles as a model for future deployments and likens threats from Central and South American street gangs to those posed by Al Qaeda or ISIS.
The document reveals a July 21 meeting between top DHS and Department of Defense officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine, and NORTHCOM Commander Gregory Guillot. The aim of the meeting was to secure high-level buy-in from Pentagon leadership to increase the role of the military in domestic immigration enforcement.
Experts and scholars have expressed alarm over the memo’s contents.
“The memo is alarming, because it speaks to the intent to use the military within the United States at a level not seen since Japanese internment,” said Carrie Lee, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “The military is the most powerful, coercive tool our country has. We don’t want the military doing law enforcement. It absolutely undermines the rule of law.”
The use of martial force to conduct immigration raids in American cities is already underway.
In Los Angeles, nearly 3,000 people have been arrested since June in a series of aggressive immigration sweeps that relied heavily on racial profiling and other unconstitutional factors.
According to The New York Times, federal agents targeted people based on appearance, language, and location, leading to the arrests of undocumented immigrants, legal residents, and U.S. citizens.
The federal courts have taken notice. On Aug. 2, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a lower court’s order temporarily blocking these indiscriminate raids. The court found that the plaintiffs—who include U.S. citizens like Brian Gavidia, arrested while working at a tow yard in East Los Angeles—were likely to succeed in showing the arrests were unconstitutional.
In her original ruling, U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong cited a “mountain of evidence” that immigration agents had violated the Fourth Amendment by relying on factors such as race, language, and occupation without establishing reasonable suspicion.
The court’s ruling highlighted the fact that relying on someone’s skin color or language as the sole basis for a stop is unconstitutional.
“Those factors alone only form a broad profile and don’t satisfy the reasonable suspicion standard,” said Judge Jennifer Sung. “In an area like Los Angeles, where Latinos make up as much as half the population, those factors cannot possibly weed out those who have undocumented status and those who have documented legal status.”
Despite these rebukes from the judiciary, the Trump administration is pushing ahead with its agenda.
The DHS memo explicitly frames Los Angeles-style operations as the future of immigration enforcement and suggests that similar actions will be necessary nationwide “for years to come.”
It equates immigrant communities with terrorist cells, stating that gangs and cartels now operate “freely inside America,” justifying a homeland defense mission on par with wartime military operations.
This false equivalency is both irresponsible and dangerous.
“The conflation of a low-level threat like transnational criminal organizations with Al Qaeda… is a clear attempt to use excessive force for a purpose normally handled by civil authorities,” said Lindsay Cohn, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College.
The implication is that immigrants, including long-term residents and workers, are now treated as enemy combatants in a domestic war zone.
The Trump administration has consistently used inflammatory rhetoric to justify expanded immigration enforcement powers.
In recent months, it invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport individuals with minimal due process, hyped questionable evidence to justify the rendition of individuals like Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, and pushed narratives of violent crime waves allegedly tied to immigrants.
The leaked DHS memo continues this pattern of fear-mongering to create a false sense of national emergency that can justify otherwise illegal actions.
The administration has also shown disdain for judicial oversight. After the Ninth Circuit upheld the temporary restraining order, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that “unelected judges are undermining the will of the American people.”
This framing pits the executive branch against the judiciary and echoes a broader authoritarian narrative—one where courts are delegitimized, oversight is dismissed, and the rule of law is subverted in favor of raw executive power.
At the local level, cities like Los Angeles have pushed back. Mayor Karen Bass called the ruling a “victory for the rule of law” and pledged to continue protecting residents from racial profiling and illegal federal enforcement tactics.
Eight municipalities joined the ACLU’s lawsuit after armed federal agents and National Guard troops flooded Latino neighborhoods like MacArthur Park, sparking protests and public outcry.
The legal battle is not over. While immigration enforcement in Los Angeles has slowed under court orders, raids continue in surrounding areas not covered by the injunction, such as San Diego and Encinitas.
The administration may appeal to the full Ninth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court to lift restrictions on its tactics.
All of this raises the stakes for democracy. What we are witnessing is the construction of a domestic security apparatus that mirrors the worst excesses of the post-9/11 era. But instead of targeting external threats, it turns the tools of surveillance, militarization, and indefinite detention against communities within our borders.
Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center for Justice warned that “normalizing routine military support to law enforcement” could create a kind of domestic “Forever War,” one that is uniquely dangerous. It is a vision of America where tanks roll through neighborhoods, troops conduct raids without warrants, and entire communities are treated as enemies of the state.
The Founders of this country were clear-eyed about the dangers of a standing army turned inward.
That is why the Posse Comitatus Act exists, why the Constitution limits the executive branch, and why the separation of military and civilian authority is sacrosanct in American democracy. Trump’s militarized immigration agenda threatens to undo all of that.
We must not accept the normalization of military force against our own citizens. We must not allow racial profiling and constitutional violations to become routine. And we must not be silent as the line between law enforcement and warfare is erased.
This is not just an immigration issue. It is a test of whether the United States will remain a constitutional democracy—or descend into authoritarian rule cloaked in the language of national security.
This is not how a democracy behaves. If Americans wish to remain one, they must not look away.
