The Pentagon is allowing the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use a military base in Colorado to detain undocumented migrants arrested by federal deportation officers, the United States Northern Command said on Tuesday, plunging the U.S. military deeper into President Trump’s order to secure the southwestern border. Law enforcement officers began using facilities at Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colo., on Monday, the New York Times reports. No military personnel are to be involved in processing and detaining “criminal aliens within the U.S.,” the Northern Command said in a statement. But deportation officers will benefit from the sprawling base’s infrastructure and overall security. The immigration service requested and received “a temporary operations center, staging area, and a temporary holding location for the receiving, holding, and processing of illegal aliens,” according to the Northern Command. It was not immediately clear how many migrants the immigration service plans to process or hold at the military base.
Responsibility for operating the detention facility at the base falls to senior immigration service leaders, special agents and analysts, as well as personnel from other parts of the Department of Homeland as well as other federal law enforcement agencies, the Northern Command said. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Monday, his first full official day on the job, that “whatever is needed at the border will be provided.” He did not rule out Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, a law more than 200 years old, to allow the use of the armed forces for law enforcement duty, which is otherwise barred. About 1,600 Marines and Army soldiers have arrived near the Mexican border in California and Texas in the past week, joining 2,500 Army reservists called to active duty who were already there. More troops are expected to deploy to the border in the coming days, Pentagon officials say.
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