Trump administration considering labeling some suspected cartel and gang members inside the US as ‘enemy combatants’
CNN
The Trump administration has been examining whether it can label some suspected cartel and gang members inside the US as “enemy combatants” as a possible way to detain them more easily and limit their ability to challenge their imprisonment, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations.
The Trump administration has been examining whether it can label some suspected cartel and gang members inside the US as “enemy combatants” as a possible way to detain them more easily and limit their ability to challenge their imprisonment, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations. The “enemy combatant” designation could also be applied to suspected narco-terrorists outside the US, the people said, as a way to potentially give the US a justification to conduct lethal strikes against them. After the 9/11 attacks in 2001, the US attached the label “enemy combatant” to anyone accused of being a part of or supporting the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces engaged in hostilities against the US – and it used that sweeping definition to keep many of them in military detention on Guantanamo Bay indefinitely, without charge, trial, or judicial review. The discussions have revived a debate from President Donald Trump’s first term in 2018, when he wanted to apply the label to all migrants who had entered the US illegally, according to two books written by former Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor. “Lawyers and policy folks like me said that it was nuts and that they’d never meet the legal definition, and if we started treating migrants like terrorists it wouldn’t just be a slippery slope – it would be a f**king mudslide into illegality and police state behavior,” said a former Trump administration official who served at DHS during his first term. One of the people familiar with the current deliberations said this time around, the administration was only considering ways to use the label against suspected members of the eight groups Trump has designated as foreign terrorist organizations, including Tren de Aragua and MS-13.
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