The recent increase in over 60, 000 unaccompanied children flooding across our southern borders, coupled with the United States inability to stop the smugglers from bring them across, points to some critical weaknesses in our Homeland Security protection. Before terrorist can exploit these weaknesses, America has to find a way to fill the gap. One possible solution to fix these gaps in our security is to use the Army Reserve and National Guard troops to support the overwhelming mission of securing our homeland and thousands of miles of unprotected borders. Even though the Posse Comitatus Act greatly limits the Army Reserve and National Guard units in guarding …show more content…
A good example of using the National Guard for this type of mission came in 2014, when Texas State Governor used his authority to deploy over 1,000 Texas National Guard Soldiers along the Southern Texas border to help the Federal Border Patrol agents in stemming the flood of unaccompanied illegal children coming across the border. The process of securing the land borders and coastal waterways from international terrorism is one of the most critical issues facing the United States, given the ever-growing threat from international and homegrown terrorist known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) also known as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It is time for America to reevaluate the Posse Comitatus Act and amended it to reflect today’s threats against our Homeland Security.
The Posse Comitatus Act and Activation for Homeland Security …show more content…
Border Patrol (USBP), Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Immigration and Naturalization Service, U.S. Custom Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). The lead agencies tasked with patrolling the 8,000 miles of land borders and coastal waterways are the USBP and USCG. Between them, there are 21,000 agents in the USBP and 49,000 personnel in the USCG, which together equal a little more than the entire New York City police and security personnel.
In the early days of our nation, American leaders felt it important to establish limits on how the nation’s military forces could be involved in the enforcement of civil laws. They did this by putting laws in place that direct when and how the military supports civilian law enforcement. This law was originally part of the 45th Congresses Army appropriations bill, introduced by Kentucky Congressman J. Proctor Knott as an amendment that was known as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 (Matthews,