President Donald Trump is now deploying military lawyers to Minneapolis under the guise of aiding federal prosecutors, who are now overwhelmed by the number of cases they're struggling to navigate.
U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is not only arresting possible immigrants, but they're also taking Americans into custody, either for claims they're obstructing law enforcement, or those they've mistaken for immigrants.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth asked the military to find "40 judge advocate general officers, from which 25 will be selected to serve as special assistant United States attorneys in Minneapolis," CNN reported Wednesday.
Trump also intends to send 1,000 additional federal agents to aid the 2,000 agents already on the ground.
"Ideally, have significant experience in criminal prosecution, civil litigation, administrative law, immigration law, general litigation, or other related fields,” the request said, according to the report.
After the Justice Department was asked to target the family of Minneapolis mom Renee Nicole Good, six prosecutors resigned, and three of those were top prosecutors from the Minnesota District, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Not only is there an increase in arrests, but the local DOJ office is now experiencing a staffing shortage.
Speaking to CNN about the Pentagon getting involved in matters inside the U.S., former deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department Elliot Williams said on a "basic level," it isn't out of the ordinary.
"At its most basic level, of course, it is common within the government for attorneys to be loaned to one place or another to surge when there just isn't a need," he began. "Look, the government, despite what everybody says about the government being too big, actually is quite understaffed in many areas, and lawyers in the immigration context are actually the government just needs more of them, regardless of where anybody is about this issue, you just don't have enough personnel."
What is not normal, he said, is that these are being sent in addition to a surge of 1,000 ICE agents while there are already 2,000 on the ground.
"What is remarkable is the backdrop to all of this with the deployments of personnel in Minneapolis, with sort of the boots on the ground, with this sort of surge in immigration enforcement, that's far greater than certainly I've seen at any point in my career, even having worked for ICE," said Williams, who worked for over four year at ICE as the assistant director for congressional relations.
"So simply putting lawyers someplace, not a big deal. But this world that we're in right now, absolutely remarkable," he added.
Watch the segment below:
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