A classified Justice Department memo has reportedly indemnified the U.S. military against prosecution for a series of controversial boat strikes in the Caribbean, suggesting the Trump administration recognizes it may be operating near the legal boundary for military force, "Hvylya" reports, citing The Atlantic.
Defense scholar Kori Schake pointed to the memo alongside another signal: the abrupt retirement last year of the head of U.S. Southern Command amid the strikes. Taken together, these developments "suggest at least some level of concern inside the government that the administration is operating very close to the legal line in those operations," Schake wrote.
The Caribbean operations sit within a longer history of legal constraints on domestic and overseas military use. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the use of U.S. military forces for law enforcement unless Congress authorizes it, a governor requests it, or the president invokes the Insurrection Act. Just last year, the Supreme Court reinforced this restriction in Trump v. Illinois.
More broadly, Trump has "deployed military forces into cities and states over the objections of their mayors and governors, or has attempted to," Schake noted. She described the current civil-military friction as consisting "almost entirely of civilian leaders pushing the military up to or over the bounds of traditional decorum or even the law."
The Posse Comitatus Act was originally enacted as part of a political bargain to end Reconstruction, after President Ulysses Grant had sent federal troops to protect polling places and supervise ballot counting in three southern states during the 1876 election.
Also read: Largest War Since Iraq: How Trump Launched a Military Campaign Without Congressional Approval.