World Watch Focus: Why Militarizing the Border Is Wrong

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In the ongoing debate about the issue of illegal immigration and border security, a constant refrain from all sides of the political spectrum has been the suggestion that the problem can be solved by militarizing the borders. This concept has been fielded by politicians, pundits, and average Americans alike. This concept is also wrong, immoral, and unjust.

There is no argument that something must be done to secure the US borders, particularly the border with Mexico, and that such security will likely only be achieved by an increase of manpower along those borders. There can be no doubt that such manpower must have the ability to find, apprehend, and deal with illegals caught trying to cross that border. These are facts which must be dealt with as part of the current debate.

Those that argue, however, that the US Military should be employed in such a role fail to understand the role that the US Military should play in our society. The US Military, whatever euphemisms we may use about defense and national security, is an instrument of war. The US Military is trained, organized, and equipped to destroy America’s enemies, wherever they may be found, by use of catastrophic and lethal force.

Now, unless the people of the United States are going to take the drastic step of declaring Mexico an enemy deserving the employment of that catastrophic and lethal force, what will the US Military legitimately do in a role of securing the borders? What training, organization, and equipment does the US military have that prepares it to apprehend and deport those who try to enter the country illegally?

Is the US going to authorize the use of force against illegals? Are we going to tell the infantrymen of the regular army and National Guard that they have the authority to shoot those found trying to cross the border? If not, then what are we going to authorize them to do?

If the answer is apprehend and deport those who try to cross the border illegally, then the answer already violates the role that the US Military is supposed to play in defending the US against its enemies. Indeed, an 18 year old infantryman who was trained for weeks to be an effective and lethal killer of an enemy has no qualifications to apprehend and deport.

In fact, such a use of the military to secure the borders would eventually bring the daily reality of the streets of places like Fallujah to places like El Paso. If the US does not deploy its military to the border with the capacity to do what it is trained, organized, and equipped to do, then those trying to cross will eventually realize that the militarization is essentially iconic, and will continue to cross anyway. When does such a confrontation degrade into armed smugglers engaging in asymmetric warfare against the military?

Further, the entire concept of militarizing the border violates the basic precept of how we use the military at all. Again, unless the US faces a military threat along its borders, a fact that can only be established by a narrow set of declarations from the President and Congress, it is actually illegal for the US to use its military in that fashion. This fact hearkens back the original point about the US Military. The US government long ago realized that the military’s role is to act as the very enactor of catastrophic and lethal force that it is described as possessing. What place does such a force have in enforcing the law?

Granted, this argument against using the military to secure the borders does not answer the question of how to secure them. Such an answer is far more complicated than deploying an infantry division to the border as a deterrent, however it can be summarized by stating that we already have agencies and forces that are nominally trained, organized, and equipped to deal with the illegal immigration problem, if only they were funded and manned sufficiently to carry out their roles.

Agencies like the Border Patrol and the USCIS are the core of the kind of organization that should be securing the borders and enforcing immigration law. These agencies may well need to be reorganized into a more effective force, perhaps even one that is paramilitary in nature, but these civilian agencies should be used to deal with the civilian problem of securing the border unless the US truly wants to take the step of making the problem a military one.

Ultimately, the tired answer of using the military to secure the border speaks to a deeper and more fundamental problem that the US has, and that is the reality that we too often see the highly effective, all-volunteer fighting force of the US Military as the solution to too many problems, from relieving natural disasters, to policing foreign warring states, to securing borders without really considering how those jobs should actually be handled and by whom.

None of this is to say that the US Military is not capable of doing whatever it is asked, nor does this argue that the US Military might not be successful in securing the borders. Instead, the argument is that using the US Military for such a task is wrong because that is not what the US Military is for. The US needs to solve the border and immigration problem with the right tool, not succumb to the temptation to use whatever is most expedient.

DLH