Washington
CNN
—
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will not recommend invoking the Insurrection Act in a memo the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security are preparing to send to President Donald Trump about the conditions at the southern border, multiple US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.
The Insurrection Act is a 19th century law that would allow the president to use active-duty troops within the United States to perform law enforcement functions such as arresting migrants. Trump issued an executive order in January declaring an emergency at the southern border that ordered Hegseth and Noem to send him a report within 90 days about the conditions there, and advising whether to invoke the Insurrection Act to help obtain “complete operational control” of the border.
The deadline for Hegseth and Noem’s recommendation is Sunday, but the Pentagon and DHS are expected to send the memo with their findings to the White House next week, officials said.
Hegseth and Noem are expected to tell Trump that border crossings are currently low and that they don’t need additional authorities at this point to help control the flow of migrants, officials said. Migrant crossings at the US southern border have been under 300 a day, according to a Homeland Security official — a dramatic drop from recent years when unlawful crossings were well over 1,000 or more a day.
The US military has deployed thousands of additional troops, including active-duty forces, to the southern border in recent months, but they have been doing patrols, building barricades and providing logistical support to DHS — not conducting arrests.
Trump officials have been frustrated with the slower pace of interior arrests across the country of undocumented immigrants, and there have been some tense calls about it between the White House and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, multiple sources said.
But interior arrests often require significant manpower and resources, moreso than detaining migrants as they cross the border. Invoking the Insurrection Act and allowing US troops to get involved in arresting migrants has been viewed by some in Trum’s orbit as a way to help bolster arrest numbers across the country, one official explained.
But a surge of arrests could also create capacity issues at detention facilities across the country, officials said.
The US Army’s base in El Paso, Texas — Fort Bliss — has been chosen as a site to detain and house potentially thousands of migrants, and contracts have already been signed to start the construction of migrant facilities on the base, CNN has reported. But those facilities have not been built yet, and construction of tents at Guantanamo Bay to house migrants has been put on hold indefinitely.
