Why Are National Guardsmen Not Allowed To Make Arrests?

Unlike a lot of countries, we have a tradition of keeping our military out of domestic affairs, and certainly out of "law enforcement." I'm surprised that you are surprised.

 

If you're arresting people, it means you're sending them through the legal process. Guardsman don't have the same training as cops - they aren't properly trained in the legal side of things: proper treatment in custody, what rights an arrestee has, etc.

 

We also have what is now a long standing national policy of our borders being "unprotected" by the military in the continental United States. We don't have fortresses, we have no "Maginot Line," we have no machine gun emplacements facing north or south. The policy is different off the coasts, because any country could approach us there with bad intent, as happened at the end of 1941. We have an official policy of considering Mexico and Canada our friends, which is unsurprising. Heck, in the European Union, they essentially have open borders between a couple of dozen or so countries. US policy in this regard makes sense and to change it now would be seen as an unfriendly act by Canada and Mexico, and justifiably so.

I think it's a good policy. It makes sense, it promotes good relations, it insures trade between the countries. What's the problem?

 

What is troubling from an intellectual point of view is the type of persons who would want national guardsmen running around arresting supposed illegals are often the types of folks who claim loudly on Fox and at billionaire organized Tea Party events that they are into the Constitution, freedom, liberty and into limited government.

Just a mass of contradictions.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

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Posse Comitatus Act

The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of Reconstruction, with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Navy, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States.

The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Act.

History

The Act was a response to, and subsequent prohibition of, the military occupation by U.S. Army troops of the former Confederate States during the ten years of Reconstruction (1867–1877) following the American Civil War (1861–1865). The U.S. withdrew Federal troops from Southern states as a result of a compromise in one of the most disputed national elections in American history, the 1876 U.S. presidential election. Samuel J. Tilden of New York, the Democratic candidate, defeated Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio in the popular vote. Tilden garnered 184 electoral votes to Hayes' 165; 20 disputed electoral votes remained uncounted. After a bitter fight, Congress struck a deal resolving the dispute and awarding the presidency to Hayes.

In return for Southern acquiescence regarding Hayes, Republicans agreed to support the withdrawal of federal troops from the former Confederate states, ending Reconstruction. Known as the Compromise of 1877, this deal of political expediency removed federal protection for Southern ex-slaves. The U.S. Constitution places primary responsibility for the holding of elections in the hands of the individual states. The maintenance of peace, conduct of orderly elections, and prosecution of unlawful actions are all state responsibilities, pursuant to the states' primary job of exercising police power and maintaining law and order.

During the local, state, and federal elections of 1874 and 1876 in the former Confederate states, all levels of government chose not to exercise their police powers to maintain law and order. Many acts of violence, and a suppression of the vote of some political and racial groups, resulted in the election of state legislators and U.S. congressmen who halted and reversed political reform in the American South.

When the U.S. Representatives and Senators from the former Confederate states reached Washington, they set as a priority the creation of a statute prohibiting any future President or Congress from directing, by military order or federal legislation, the imposition of federal troops in any U.S. state.

The original Posse Comitatus Act referred essentially to the United States Army. The Air Force was added in 1956 and the Navy and the Marine Corps have been included by a regulation of the Department of Defense. The United States Coast Guard, when acting in its peacetime capacity, is not included in the Act. (The U.S. Coast Guard was originally part of the Treasury Department, was later part of the Department of Transportation, and is now within the Department of Homeland Security.) However, if, in wartime, a portion of the Coast Guard were subsumed within the Department of the Navy, as it was during World War II, that portion would lose its federal police power authority and responsibility over the federal law-enforcement duties of its civilian mission. This law is often relied upon to prevent the Department of Defense from interfering in domestic law enforcement.

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...more at the link.