Geoff Bennett:
The Trump administration will temporarily assign military lawyers to act as judges in immigration cases.
A statement released by the Pentagon spokesperson says: “At the request of the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense is identifying qualified judge advocates and civilian attorneys for details to serve as temporary immigration judges. These DOD attorneys will augment existing resources to help further combat a backlog of cases by presiding over immigration hearings.”
There are a number of questions about the implications of this novel move.
And, for that, we turn to James McPherson. He was the undersecretary of the Army during the first Trump administration and also had a 25-year career in the Navy, where he served as that service’s top lawyer in uniform.
Thank you for being with us.
And before we get to the implications, I have to ask, in your view, is this legal, the expansion of the U.S. military into a civilian judicial process?
Rear Adm. James McPherson (Ret.), Former U.S. Undersecretary of the Army: Well, there’s certainly a lot of legal issues that is raised by this decision, not the least of which is whether or not it’s appropriate to appoint a commissioned officer in the military to these positions, whether or not it violates the Posse Comitatus Act.
There are some old Office of Legal Counsel opinions out of the Department of Justice that indicate it is legal, but in a very narrow sense. And whether that narrow sense is met by appointing them as temporary immigration judges is yet to be seen.
