Republican US Senator Rand Paul voiced opposition on Sunday to the idea of using the military to carry out mass deportations of people living in the country illegally after US president-elect Donald Trump signalled last week that he plans to do so.
“You don’t do it with the army because it’s illegal,” Paul said on CBS’s Face the Nation programme.
“If they send the army into New York and you have 10,000 troops marching carrying semi-automatic weapons, I think it’s a terrible image, and I will oppose that.”
A 19th-century US law prohibits federal troops from being used in domestic policing except when authorised by Congress.
Paul, at times a maverick within his party, noted that he supports the idea of deporting people living in the United States illegally who have criminal records, but said that police are better equipped than the military to carry out that role and to heed the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. There is a “distrust of putting the army into our streets” among Americans, Paul said.
Asked if this is a red line for him and whether it would affect his Senate vote to confirm Trump’s pick of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to run the Department of Homeland Security, Paul said: “I will not support and will not vote to use the military in our cities.”