15 March 2025
The President of the United States has signed a proclamation, invoking a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act, declaring that all Venezuelan citizens who are suspected to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang are “Alien Enemies” of the state, and can be summarily detained and deported.
Let’s make one thing clear: there is a long-standing crisis of gang violence in the United States, especially along the U.S. southwest border. Members of Tren de Aragua have waged tremendous violence against American communities, causing terrible humanitarian consequences exacerbated by insufficient resources. This issue warrants a comprehensive approach to solving, including criminal prosecution for those found guilty in a court of law.
The nature of this crisis matters, though. We are not at war. This is not an invasion by a foreign state. And it is important that our country’s rhetoric and actions both reflect that basic reality.
Invoking the Alien Enemies Act is deeply concerning to military families like us, for several reasons. First, it is exclusively a wartime authority, which the moment we are in clearly is not. This move radically escalated an already-volatile situation, and it puts the 50-70,000 U.S. service families and civilians living along the U.S.-Mexico border at risk of severe retaliation from foreign actors.
Second, this Act removes crucial guardrails that ensure our service members are only ordered into missions that fall within proper legal boundaries and align with their training. Alien Enemies permits the summary detention and deportation of people merely based on their ancestry or suspicion of affiliation. Military troops are currently deployed in support of immigration enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border, and they will likely be ordered to participate in these new detention activities in which civil rights are being recklessly suspended – yet no person in uniform has been trained for this, because domestic policing and immigration control are not their job.
The U.S. military is not and must not become an arm of domestic law enforcement. This matters to military families because we are deeply embedded in our civilian communities; 70% of us live off-installation. Negative public perceptions of the military directly affect how military families are perceived and treated by our civilian neighbors in our daily lives. One need only look to history for instances where military families have faced hostility, resentment, social isolation, and even violence from their civilian neighbors when broad public sentiment turned sour against particular uses of military force.
Announcements like today’s contribute to the blurring of constitutional lines between law enforcement and the military, and increase the likelihood that our loved ones in uniform will be ordered to violate the civil rights of others. That will harm the civilian-military relations families like us rely on for safety.
Third, this Act returns our country to a shameful chapter of our history. Alien Enemies was most recently used to justify WWII internment camps of Americans with Japanese, German, and Italian descent. It is widely agreed upon that this was ugly and wrong; Congress even later apologized and provided reparations. For all uniformed personnel ordered to participate in modern-day detentions – profound moral injury is at stake.
Today’s announcement marks a radical departure from peacetime procedures and civilian-military norms. And military families will be among those harmed.