By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A top Democratic lawmaker has asked the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s office to investigate whether the U.S. military broke the law when it deported 17 migrants to El Salvador at the end of March without any U.S. government civilians on board.
President Donald Trump’s use of the military to carry out deportations of migrants, in support of the Department of Homeland Security, has previously come under intense scrutiny from Congress and from courts.
But a flight on March 30 from a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to El Salvador was different because of disclosures that no DHS personnel participated in the flight. At the time, the Pentagon declared it a “counter-terrorism” mission, a move that appears to be its justification for conducting the flight without any civilian personnel aboard.
In a letter to the Department of Defense acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins, Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was unaware of any counter-terrorism authorities that would allow for such a flight.
“We understand there were no personnel from the Department of Homeland Security on this flight … contrary to longstanding DOD policy and practice,” Reed wrote in the letter, seen by Reuters on Thursday.
The Inspector General’s office doesn’t typically comment on what investigations it has granted but officials say such requests are taken seriously, particularly when they come from such a senior lawmaker.
Reed asked that the investigation look into the military chain of command authorizing the flight, any internal legal review, and “whether this flight complied with federal law.”
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
