During his UK state visit this week Donald Trump suggested that UK PM Keir Starmer bring in the military to deal with Channel migrants. Clearly, borders haunt the American right. Which isn’t to say they don’t keep centrists up at night too.
Speaking at Chequers Thursday, Trump told his British counterpart:
You have people coming in and I told the prime minister I would stop it, and it doesn’t matter if you call out the military, it doesn’t matter what means you use.
Senior Labour minister Peter Kyle later talked down the idea:
What [Trump] suggested was that the military are used, but we have the UK Border Force. It is now established and has been reinforced and bolstered, and has new powers under this government.
He added:
The navy actually does have a working relationship with the UK Border Force, and the navy can be called upon if needed. So we do have the functional relationship that we need within our military and keeping our borders safe and secure.
But the truth is Starmer is already pitching nearer and nearer to the far-right on immigration and refugees. A Reform UK government is a clear and present danger. And with a flailing electoral left, it’s worth looking at a new development on the southern border of America.
Border militarisation
For Trump’s America, the southern border has a singular power. It is used to fuel the mythology of cartel gang invasion. And it is an entry point for, among other things, cheap, insecure labour which can be rounded up when politically expedient.
Trump himself has obsessed over militarising the frontier with Mexico for years. And Trump being Trump, if a buck can be made in the process it will be.
A new program of border security will hinge on the use of private, likely highly unaccountable mercenary firms. This will happen under the aegis of a new Defence Bill.
At the centre of the bill, a quietly added provision which will allow the Department of Defence to outsource border security to private firms.
Backed by the military-industrial complex
US publication Jacobin reports:
A provision in the legislation, tacked on in a July amendment, for the first time gives the Defense Secretary authority to outsource the agency’s work at the border, a proposal that critics warn could prove a bonanza for the shadowy mercenary and private security firms that work with the Pentagon, often with little public transparency.
And the politician who added the provision “has received significant contributions from defense industry giants, including Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly Raytheon)”.
As Jacobin points out the military has traditionally not been heavily involved at the border – or in immigration – “due to a long-standing federal statute that bars the United States military from enforcing domestic laws (a doctrine Trump has been accused of flouting in recent weeks)”.
Established conventions like this are dissolving rapidly in Trump’s second term. And we know that what the right demand one week, centrists are given to legislating into reality the next.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/NBC News
