Trump’s War on Immigrants Is a Trojan Horse to Normalize Domestic Use of the Military

While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) faces growing scrutiny for its role in brutally carrying out Trump’s mass-deportation agenda, another institution’s involvement has received less attention: the U.S. military.

Trump’s use of the military in the war on immigrants garnered some mainstream backlash when he provocatively deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers and Marines to the streets of Los Angeles. Now, people are again becoming aware of domestic militarization as Trump threatens to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops and other federal forces to DC. But these headline-grabbing moves in LA and DC must be understood in the context of a larger, growing domestic use of the military against immigrant communities, which has largely developed without mainstream scrutiny.

Even before troops were sent to Los Angeles to terrorize immigrants and their allies, Trump had begun expanding the military’s role along the U.S.-Mexico border by transferring public land from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Defense. Through massive land seizures along the border, Trump has already managed to give the military jurisdiction over one-third of all land along the southern border. Along with this, Trump is deploying the National Guard to handle paperwork at ICE detention centers in 20 different states and is preparing to use military bases in New Jersey, Indiana, and Texas for immigrant detention. In Texas, the Army base Fort Bliss is set to become the country’s largest immigrant detention center.

Nick Turse reports for the Intercept that according to the Pentagon’s own data, the number of troops deployed in partnership with ICE is 20,000, but that number could be much higher. Greg Sargent reports in the New Republic that a leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security indicates that there is an effort by the administration to persuade top Pentagon officials to ramp up domestic military use for anti-immigrant efforts for years to come. Simply put, Trump is pursuing an unprecedented expansion of the U.S. military’s involvement in the bipartisan war on immigrants, and there has been little opposition.

The U.S. Regime Is Divided over Domestic Militarization

Even before returning to the presidency, Trump made no secret of his desire to increase the military’s domestic use. This aligns with the Far Right’s larger goal, outlined in Project 2025, to strengthen the executive branch of the U.S. government in order to carry out an ambitious agenda of attacking workers and democratic rights. The normalization of domestic militarization, however, is much easier said than done. Along with limits imposed by the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the military’s use for domestic law enforcement, most Americans are unlikely to accept domestic militarization. But Trump has been clever in incrementally testing the waters by using anti-immigrant sentiments as an excuse to justify domestic military deployments.

Trump will undoubtedly face institutional opposition as he attempts to break precedent in his use of the military for deportations. Legal scholars have already begun arguing that these policies violate the Posse Comitatus Act, and Democrats have also pushed back against the use of military bases for immigrant detention. But this institutional opposition has significant limits. For one, the Democrats have shown time and again that they are unwilling to seriously fight Trump if it risks calling into question the institutions of the state. Additionally, Democrats’ opposition to Trump’s deportations is more about how deportations are carried out, not about any serious opposition to the broader war on immigrants, which Democrats have been instrumental in building. The limits of relying on courts as a site of struggle against Trump are also becoming increasingly apparent in the face of rulings that support Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and broader executive overreach.

There is also a larger ideological limit to opposition from Democrats. Trump’s use of the military for mass deportations takes place in the context of a broader attempt by the Far Right to reorganize the military. This includes both a reorganization of the U.S. military presence abroad and an internal reorganization. It is difficult to predict how far the Trump administration will go in its attempt to reorganize the U.S. military along far-right, ideological lines. But it is no secret that this is a goal of the administration as it attempts to ban trans troops and abolish DEI initiatives in an institution that was already rampantly queerphobic, misogynistic, and racist. On top of this, the administration has fired generals who might obstruct the Far Right’s military agenda.

In this context, institutional opposition to Trump’s use of the military in the war on immigrants mainly stems from concern over how this domestic use of the military could threaten both the current operations of the military abroad and its prestige in the eyes of the American public. One example is how New Jersey’s Democratic candidate for governor, Mikie Sherrill, responded to Trump’s plans to use Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey for immigrant detention. Sherrill said,

This is a blatant misuse of one of New Jersey’s most critical military assets and reduces a vital national security installation to a stage for political theater, which flies in the face of an apolitical military. Using the base for detention operations risks degrading operational capacity, places an inappropriate burden on our servicemembers, and harms civil-military relations.

The statement doesn’t even bother to feign concern for how this detention could harm immigrant communities in New Jersey and surrounding states. Sherrill’s pearl clutching is reserved for her precious military and her fear that it might operate less effectively or suffer a reputational hit. Sherrill’s priorities perfectly reflect the limits of opposition to domestic militarization coming from the Democratic Party, which has increasingly leaned into pro-militarist and anti-immigrant policies.

How the Left and Social Movements Can Fight Back

While public trust in the military has declined in the aftermath of the war on terror—expressed most clearly in the military’s recruitment crisis—it remains one of the few institutions with an approval rating higher than 50 percent. With 60 percent of Americans viewing the military favorably according to Pew Research, it is second only to small businesses in public favorability.

The military’s prestige could take a serious hit if it plays an overt role in attacking communities within the United States. It is also possible that the lower ranks of the military and prospective recruits might begin to question the institution’s role if it is increasingly used against communities in the United States. The deployment to Los Angeles alone led to an increase in calls to the GI Rights Hotline, a service that provides counsel for troops questioning their orders and assists those who decide they want to leave the military early by filing as conscientious objectors.

Those of us on the Left, however, must resist attempts by the Democrats to oppose Trump’s use of the military with the goal of maintaining the U.S. military’s legitimacy as an institution. At a time when young people in the United States and other centers of imperialism are developing anti-imperialist and internationalist ideas, especially in response to the genocide in Palestine, it is essential to double down on opposition to all the institutions of imperialism and state violence.

The U.S. military is a fundamentally imperialist institution. Its operations abroad—which Democrats are so concerned will face disruption from growing domestic deployments—maintain a global empire at the barrel of a gun. From the most violent examples like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to more subtle forms of violence like the occupation of Okinawa or training militaries and police in Africa, the communities subjected to U.S. military deployments abroad are no less worthy of solidarity than the communities in the United States who are on the receiving end of domestic militarization. And while domestic use of the military has been uncommon, it is not unheard of. This is an institution that has historically been used in the United States to attack militant workers’ struggles and uprisings for Black liberation.

By understanding the violent, anti-worker, imperialist character of the U.S. military, it becomes clear that Trump’s increasing use of the military in the war on immigrants poses a threat to all working-class and oppressed communities whose struggles face state repression. Social movements, labor, and the Left should organize against domestic militarization with this perspective. Troops questioning their use for domestic policing should be supported, and we should encourage them to develop a strong understanding of the military as an inherently oppressive institution that they must fully break with if they wish to avoid being used to terrorize workers and oppressed communities.

It is the masses, however, who are not part of the military but hold illusions about the institution that will be most important to focus on. Larger sectors of the public will likely question their relationship to the military far sooner than those within its ranks, especially since there is already such a deep questioning of other state institutions in recent years, including the police. This, combined with growing anti-imperialist consciousness, can elevate opposition to the war on immigrants to a deeper level of opposition against the entire system of U.S. imperialism.

Here, Los Angeles is a powerful example, now that Trump has had to withdraw the troops he initially deployed to attack the immigrant rights movement. It’s important to remember that the withdrawal from LA didn’t come about thanks to the arguments of legal scholars or challenges from the courts and elected officials. The military deployment against immigrants in Los Angeles was defeated through the combative community organizing in defense of immigrants and the threat posed by the potential of LA’s powerful unions uniting with the movement. If this type of resistance can be built across the country, uniting all sectors interested in fighting the growing authoritarianism under the Trump administration, even the most powerful military in the world will have to retreat.

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