Let's Rededicate Ourselves to a Nonpartisan Military Free of Domestic Entanglements this Memorial Day
Trump's plan to deploy the military for immigration enforcement will set a dangerous precedent that'll undermine our democracy
Dear Readers:
A core commitment of liberal democracies is the ideal of an apolitical military that is kept out of domestic entanglements. That’s why today, Memorial Day, two days after Donald Trump, wearing a red MAGA hat, addressed West Point graduates as if it were one of his political rallies, we are running an essay by Christopher Purdy—a veteran who served for eight years in the Army National Guard, where he was deployed to Iraq—defending the ideal of an apolitical military. Purdy, the founder and CEO of The Chamberlain Network, a pro-democracy advocacy organization for veterans, reminds us of the importance of fiercely guarding our military’s independence from partisan politics and ideologically-driven domestic disputes.
To fully appreciate the precipice our democracy is standing on, do read.
Berny Belvedere
Senior Editor
Many worried that President Donald Trump would use the U.S. military for domestic immigration enforcement—blurring the line between national defense and internal policing. They were right. Trump is making the military an active element of federal enforcement.
In Texas, members of the National Guard have been federally deputized to investigate, arrest, and transport migrants for civil immigration violations. Many military installations are being prepared to hold tens of thousands of detainees and others, such as the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, have already been repurposed.
But even more concerning is what comes next. Public statements and policy signals suggest that the administration is considering deploying the military against states unwilling to participate in its enforcement efforts. Some in administration circles are flirting with treating a state’s refusal to support federal immigration operations not as a political disagreement, but as a breakdown in civil order—potentially justifying stronger executive action by invoking the rarely-used Insurrection Act.
Trump’s Private Army
This Act does grant the president authority to deploy the military domestically in cases of violent unrest or obstruction of federal law. But, to date, it has been used only in moments of extreme crisis—insurrections, riots, and refusals to comply with court orders—not to settle intergovernmental policy disputes.
Consider the contrasts: Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy invoked the Act and dispatched federal troops to Arkansas and Mississippi, respectively, after these states defied court orders barring segregated schools. President George H. W. Bush used it during the 1992 Los Angeles riots after the California governor requested assistance following days of violence that overwhelmed local law enforcement. In each case, the Act was used to restore order or uphold existing legal mandates—not to compel states to enforce a sitting administration’s highly controversial policy.
Applying it to immigration enforcement would mark a profound break from tradition. A state’s disagreement with federal priorities is not rebellion. It is a feature of our federal system. Redefining legitimate dissent as disorder akin to rebellion opens the door to military force being used as a standard tool for the implementation of an executive’s domestic policy agenda.
Trump’s defenders might argue that “past presidents used the military to enforce civil rights—why not now for border security?” But the difference is critical: past uses of the Insurrection Act enforced legal rights under the Constitution after they had been affirmed by courts. This administration is considering doing so to suppress political resistance to its agenda—in the absence of violence or judicial defiance.
There is no precedent in modern American history for the use of active-duty military forces—or federally directed National Guard units—to conduct immigration arrests in non-cooperating states. Even during past periods of crisis, such as the 1992 L.A. riots or the desegregation standoffs of the 1960s, the Insurrection Act was used only after courts had ruled or violence had erupted, and local governments had failed to act. But using military force as a first resort in a political dispute between the federal government and the states would be unprecedented.
Weaponizing the Military Toward Immigration Enforcement
Even more worrying is how few checks remain to thwart Trump.
Congress has largely ceded its role in conducting meaningful oversight of this administration. In the face of increasingly aggressive executive actions—from sweeping immigration orders to violations of longstanding legal norms—legislative resistance has been minimal. Trump, meanwhile, is treating court rulings as temporary obstacles rather than binding decisions. Witness his refusal to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the Salvadoran gulag where he was wrongfully deported—despite being ordered to do so by the Supreme Court.
And the public, already fatigued by years of political volatility, may not fully grasp how extraordinary the sight of soldiers arresting civilians and dispatching them to military bases would be.
Even though the administration is framing these steps as necessary and temporary, history teaches us that once such powers are seized, they are rarely surrendered. For example, the surveillance and other powers the federal government amassed in the Patriot Act after 9/11 have yet to be relinquished.
The normalization of military for domestic enforcement could also happen through smaller, less dramatic means besides invoking the Insurrection Act. Under Title 32 of the United States Code, National Guard troops can be federally funded while remaining under nominal state control. This means the federal government could shovel more funding to friendly governors for using their state’s National Guard to carry out immigration enforcement while withholding it from non-cooperating ones. Such a move would fall in a legal gray zone that would not trigger full Insurrection Act judicial scrutiny.
Misusing the National Guard is not the only loophole in the law that the administration could exploit to involve the military in immigration enforcement. Few noticed, but in April, President Trump designated the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-foot-wide strip of land along the U.S.-Mexico border, as a “National Defense Area” and transferred it from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Defense. This will allow U.S. troops to not only participate in the construction of border barriers, including the installment of detection equipment to monitor the border, but also detain migrants in the zone, even if they are merely trying to come to seek asylum.
This Is Not What the Armed Forces Are For
Using military personnel for domestic enforcement—especially in politically charged areas like immigration—creates a dangerous feedback loop. It militarizes policy and politicizes the military. Over time, it teaches the public to accept force instead of debate or compromise to settled disagreements.
There are also operational consequences. Soldiers are not trained to perform community policing. They are equipped for defense and deterrence—not checking documents or following civilian detention protocols. Police and law enforcement agencies already face challenges with oversight and public accountability. Bringing in military forces, which operate under a separate and less transparent legal system, would further complicate any meaningful checks on abusive power. Service members would be thrust into scenarios they are not trained to navigate, increasing the risk of escalation, legal missteps, civil rights violations, and long-term damage to both civil-military relations and public trust.
Moreover, preparing the military for domestic deployment would require an enormous diversion of time, personnel, and resources that would diminish readiness for actual battle. Mobilizing units for non-combat missions requires months of dedicated training. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, when the military blended combat operations with nation-building and peacekeeping, National Guard units often spent six months or more in training. At a time when, regardless of spending increases the House may approve, the Department of Defense is actively seeking to reduce the size of the force, it shouldn’t have to face the added responsibility of carrying out large-scale domestic missions targeting migrants inside the United States.
This risks not only straining the military from the inside but also eroding public trust from the outside. Every time the military is used to carry out politically charged domestic missions, it becomes harder to maintain the trust that holds the institution together. Morale declines. Recruitment suffers. The next generation of Americans begins to see military service not as a commitment to the Constitution, but as a weapon of politics. That does not strengthen the military but compromises it because the military’s legitimacy isn’t just built on strength, it’s built on the widespread consensus among the American people that it is doing the right thing.
Finally, deploying the military for immigration enforcement inevitably raises the question of what kind of democracy we want to live in. If the military is routinely turned against the people it serves, we risk becoming a nation where political disputes are settled at the end of a bayonet.
When the commander-in-chief turns the military inward—toward political opposition, toward communities that dissent, toward the institutions that keep power in check—he isn’t defending the country; he’s reshaping it. And the question becomes, “Where will he stop? Will there be any lines?”
Veterans understand what’s at stake. Those of us who served did so under the assumption that the military’s role was to defend the nation, not to enforce policy at home. We swore an oath to the Constitution, not to a president or a political movement. That oath doesn’t expire when we take off the uniform. It obligates us to speak up when we see the lines between civil and military life starting to blur.
The military’s legitimacy in American life rests on its apolitical role and its restraint from involvement in civilian governance. Using it to compel compliance in political disputes will erode trust and undermine this vital institution.
We need to rededicate ourselves to America’s bedrock commitment to a non-partisan military that is dedicated to defending the country abroad, not fighting political battles at home.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
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During my years as a reporter at Columbia, I covered talks from a number of military generals and found each of them troublingly ideological, emphasizing not winning wars and keeping the peace but framing various progressive hobbyhorses--from DEI to gender to climate change--as "national security issues." This was during Obama's second term, long before the Biden-Harris administration weaponized DEI and Covid mandates to disproportionately target conservatives and stack the Pentagon with Democratic loyalists. So while I share the ideal and goal of a non-partisan military, and understand why one might believe using the military for immigration enforcement is inappropriate, the politicization cow had left the barn well before Donald Trump entered politics.