WHILE ABOUT HALF of the National Guard troops patrolling Los Angeles streets received orders this week to stand down, some 2,000 still remain, and Americans are rightly concerned by the sight of armed troops patrolling an American city. We should also be worried about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s plan—now with approval from President Donald Trump—to use his state’s National Guard JAG officers as immigration judges. Both situations insert our apolitical armed forces into polarizing domestic issues that risk politicizing the military itself.
The Framers of our Constitution, who saw years of occupation by the British Army, keenly understood the threat posed by inserting a military presence into civilian communities. That’s why they were loath to approve standing armies and did so only after erecting legal and structural guardrails: The Constitution specifically subordinated the military under a civilian president and a civilian Congress, and the Bill of Rights banned troops from being quartered in private homes. So important was civilian control of the military that Gen. George Washington voluntarily resigned his commission at the end of the Revolutionary War—and so, a little over five years later when he later took the first presidential oath of office, he did so as a private citizen. This and similar actions by others, like Gen. Henry Knox, helped ensure the young nation’s new army was overseen by civilians, not officers, establishing a precedent that would later be codified in law. The risks of militarizing society were real to them, as were their concerns about politicizing the military.
Several recent actions taken by the Trump administration—the Los Angeles deployments, the deployment of hundreds of Marines to Florida to assist with ICE operations, the designation of a 250-mile-long tract of land as a National Defense Area—have raised worries about new risks of politicizing the armed forces and have brought our troops further into tension with civilian society by detailing them to roles as law enforcement and border agents. DeSantis’s and Trump’s plan to assign JAG officers as judges in immigration hearings further increases the risks that the military will become divided by—and defined by—politics.
The dangers of politicizing the military are twofold: Domestic uses of our military render it less prepared to perform its primary missions, and inject the military into civilian situations our troops are not trained for. Our active duty and reserve military forces are organized, trained, and equipped to defend our national security from external threats; the National Guard also responds to natural disasters and emergencies. With external threats erupting across the globe and hurricane and wildfire seasons now underway, we should be wary of any mission creep that degrades their readiness to serve their primary missions, especially as politically contentious missions can hurt morale and recruitment.
We should also be wary of the systematic dismantling of the guardrails our Founders established to prevent the risks inherent in the domestic application of military power. It is especially concerning that JAG officers are being pulled into civilian immigration courts mere months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth purged the senior leadership of the Army and Air Force JAG Corps—not for cause, but because he didn’t want “roadblocks to anything.” It is becoming clear that “anything” includes the improper domestic use of the military. The opacity of the process employed to replace those senior JAG leaders also confirms that the Trump administration regards “loyalty” above fidelity to the law, and that JAGs charged with giving independent legal advice are at risk of becoming rubber stamps.
With our military already deployed in Los Angeles alongside ICE agents, and the president threatening more deployments of this kind, the once sharp lines distinguishing civilian from military and national defense from domestic law enforcement continue to blur. The prospect of JAG officers donning judicial robes to preside over immigration hearings is particularly disturbing considering the conflicts of interest that can arise when JAGs mix military and civilian employment. Congress must step up and exercise its oversight authority before the lines disappear completely.
Dangerous warning signs abound, but it’s not too late to reverse course. Congressional committees can hold hearings and demand transparency so that all Americans understand the risks of injecting our military more deeply into civilian society, the risks of undermining the JAG Corps, and the critical need to maintain properly balanced civilian-military relations. If we have too few immigration judges, Congress can remedy that problem by authorizing the hiring and training of more civilian attorneys.
Deploying members of the military into law enforcement, criminal justice, and other civilian roles blurs the lines between our armed forces and civilian society in ways that would have shocked our Founders. Our Founders understood that a military strong enough to repel foreign invaders was also strong enough to repress freedoms at home. Maintaining a strong military, with a commitment to the rule of law, is undermined when politicians disregard our founding traditions and put our servicemembers where they don’t belong.
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