military has the legal and historical precedent to support law enforcement missions on the U.S.-Mexico border. A New York Times piece ran last month concluded that ‘he Posse Comitatus Act, a Reconstruction-era law, prevents active-duty troops from engaging in law enforcement activities within the United States.’ This is patently false - or else the 1997 killing of Esequiel Hernández by active-duty marines, sent to patrol the border as part of an anti-narcotics mission, would have raised further consequences past the shooting of an American. However, the myth persists that this act keeps the military from taking part in law enforcement roles like border security management and enforcement. The 1981 act created space for the military to cooperate with law enforcement as it related to the growing ‘War on Drugs.’ This quickly ballooned into aiding enforcement or supplying intelligence as it relates to immigration and customs offenses. The reform in 1981, called the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Officials Act, was in many ways a death knell for the Posse Comitatus Act as it relates to border security. All of this to say Posse Comitatus has so many holes, and so few court cases holding up its authority, that it has had little influence on the use of the military in the interior. The Posse Comitatus Act still includes allowances for National Guard forces operating under state authority, the role of the Coast Guard in peace time (through which the Navy can play a support role without breaching the Posse Comitatus act) or the Presidential power to use troops pursuant to subduing domestic violence.
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A 1956 reform brought the Air Force into the act, and a 1992 Department of Defense regulation folded in the Navy and the Marine Corps. For starters, the law initially only applied to the Army, as it was created as a means to remove the Army from its role in the post-Reconstruction South. The act itself, however, has many exceptions, and a 1981 reform further restricted its application. This act is a misunderstood and largely non-enforced doctrine that enshrines, in the minds of many Americans, the separation between military and law-enforcement roles within U.S. In the wake of President Trump’s deployment of over 5,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border at the end of October, many pundits and commentators started mulling over the legality of the order in reference to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The Elena Rodríguez case is not isolated, and the lack of clarity over who is responsible to whom in a national and joint-authority international space like the U.S.-Mexico border, now with both law enforcement and military bodies present, should bring considerable disquietude. As active-duty troops are set to be deployed through the new year, the decades old case continues to inform military engagement in the region. marines deployed to the border in 1997, which resulted in no indictments for the marines involved, remains a blight on military involvement along the border. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, the military has also been involved in a similar incident. While the majority of shootings along the border have been by U.S. Both cases raise questions surrounding authority in border zones. When he was killed in 2010, however, his killing did not result in a lawsuit. law enforcement along the border a similar situation occurred with another Mexican national, 15-year-old Sergio Hernández Guereca. Elena Rodríguez is not the first teenager to be killed by U.S. Swartz fired from the United States side of the border in Nogales, Arizona, into Nogales, Mexico, killing 16-year-old Elena Rodríguez. On 21 November, a jury in Arizona found Border Patrol Agent Lonnie Swartz not guilty in the involuntary manslaughter of José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, a Mexican teenager shot and killed by Swartz in October of 2012. Border Patrol agent stands near a section of the U.S.- Mexico border fence while on patrol in La Joya, Texas.