The rapid militarization of America’s immigration response this week represents the military deployment for domestic population control that experts and officials long claimed could never happen here.

Within 48 hours of Trump entering the White House, the Department of Defense has established a dedicated military Task Force under U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), increasing active-duty ground forces by 60% with combat troops, helicopters, and military intelligence analysts. This represents a stark departure from traditional National Guard border support – for the first time, we’re seeing the 82nd Airborne’s “forcible entry” troops under direct federal military command, signaling wartime operations rather than law enforcement assistance.

The scale already is staggering: the Department of Defense has deployed combat troops to forcibly deport over 5,000 people with military aircraft just from the San Diego and El Paso sectors alone. The barrier between civilian law enforcement and military operations – a norm and cornerstone of democratic society – has been shattered. Their initial simplified operating plan (Level 3) is unmistakably focused on combat units, traditionally reserved for global crisis response and warfare, preparing to land on U.S. soil using explicit wartime rhetoric. The Acting Defense Secretary has already directed both U.S. Transportation Command and Northern Command to begin operations, moving far beyond traditional support roles into direct military action. The administration’s executive orders literally frame immigration as an “invasion,” deliberately invoking military response authorities. This isn’t happening gradually – deportation flights by the U.S. military into remote detention centers are underway and ramping up towards Level 4 (full scale), with thousands more troops preparing for deployment.

…officials have struggled to articulate many of the details that are normally a fundamental part of any military deployment, even as this one reportedly could ultimately swell to as many as 10,000 troops and as service members were already beginning to head to the border. …all 500 Marines were being pulled from the Federal Emergency Management Agency mission to support California’s wildfire response.

As the Acting Secretary ominously warned, “This is just the beginning,” a nod to something even more alarming. The new Defense Secretary overseeing this domestic military operation was previously flagged as an extremist threat to American citizens, openly opposed rules of engagement in combat zones, and worked to minimize the role of military members in the January 6th attack. His extremist rhetoric to “restore warrior culture” signals a planned purge of anyone who might resist unlawful orders against civilian populations.

This isn’t some minor policy adjustment or temporary measure, as Trump himself brags. This is the American dam abruptly breaking. The administration is constructing the complete legal framework for treating civilian movement as warfare. This is precisely the constitutional crisis that the founders tried to prevent by separating military and civilian power – and why Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act banning federal troops from domestic law enforcement after seeing military power abused against civilian populations during Reconstruction.

By falsely declaring immigration an “invasion,” the administration is exploiting Article IV Section 4’s promise to “protect” states to override Posse Comitatus. The January 22nd executive order uses this constitutional provision to authorize immediate military action while stripping civilian protections like asylum. The deliberately bogus recasting creates legal cover for deploying combat units to raid businesses, homes, schools, and churches to expedite deportations at gunpoint – exactly what these laws were meant to prevent.

Combined with a Defense Secretary who opposed rules of engagement and celebrates “warrior culture,” this creates the complete disaster: legal framework, military infrastructure, and command structure for civilian populations suddenly becoming military targets, explicitly justified in rushed official documents. The administration is slamming these pieces into place faster than courts can respond, meaning a strategic erosion of the barriers between military and civilian law enforcement that were meant to protect democracy.

History shows us with chilling consistency that militarizing response to civilians while fraudulently describing them as militant “invaders” precedes mass human rights violations. From Guatemala’s 1982 disappearances (“Ronald Reagan’s ‘Special Unit’ Soldier Sentenced to 5,160 Years in Jail for Mass Murder“) to Indonesia’s 1965 killings to America First’s 1919 deployment of combat troops against Black farmers to America First’s 1916 gas chambers for Hispanics and burning them to death – each followed the same documented playbook: first comes false invasion rhetoric, then military deployment for “population control,” then mass detention infrastructure to abruptly disappear civilians.

In 1925, Sharpe Dunaway, an employee of the Arkansas Gazette, alleged that soldiers in Elaine had “committed one murder after another with all the calm deliberation in the world, either too heartless to realize the enormity of their crimes, or too drunk on moonshine to give a continental darn.” … anecdotal information suggests that U.S. troops also engaged in torture of African Americans to make them confess and give information.

Today, we’re seeing these exact initial stages: combat units, military transport, and leadership that illegally targets civilian populations as military threats.

The headlines now will describe rapid, systematic construction of militarized infrastructure for mass detention and deportation, being built piece by piece in plain sight. Recognizing this as a warning sign of something far worse isn’t alarmist enough by any measure; it’s a moral imperative based on historical precedent. What’s different today is how Palantir and their domestic surveillance offshoot Peregrine operate opaque unsafe targeting algorithms, as if Wall Street read “The Trial” by Kafka and thought it was a guide for unicorn startups.

The time to sound the alarm was before the election, before the executive orders, before the Senate confirmation. Some critical oversight mechanisms still do exist, but who knows if anything left will hold: Congressional oversight committees can demand answers about troop deployments and military operations on U.S. soil. Soldiers can refuse unlawful orders. State attorneys general retain authority to challenge federal overreach. Civil rights organizations can still file legal challenges against military detention. Journalists still have First Amendment protections to document and expose these operations.

History will ask what we did when we saw the clear signs. “America First” has for over 100 years meant widespread domestic terrorism, a political front for the KKK.

And yet here it is again on the federal stage as if everyone forgets everything.

What oversight we demanded, what challenges we filed, what stories we documented, what resistance we mounted. The answer can’t be that we looked away while the infrastructure for racist mass human rights tragedy was built in plain sight, again.