Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott has denied a request from the U.S. Department of Defense to activate Vermont Army National Guard soldiers in support of federal immigration enforcement activities.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth last week asked a number of states, including Vermont, to assign Guard soldiers to aid U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Joseph Brooks, a public information officer at the Vermont National Guard.
Vermont Guard officials relayed that request to Scott, who, according to Chief of Staff Jason Gibbs, has chosen not to activate the Guard for immigration enforcement purposes.
“We just don’t see this as a good use of the Guard,” Gibbs said in an interview Wednesday.
Section 502(f) of Title 32 is the federal code that allows the president to enlist state guards in homeland security missions. But Brooks said the governor has the sole authority to decide whether the Guard will participate.
“If the governor does not want to support a Title 32 status mission, then they don’t,” Brooks said. “If the governor does want to support it, then he issues the order and so then the National Guard goes about its planning process.”
Gibbs said it’s “not all that unusual” for the governor to approve Title 32 requests for federal missions related to counterterrorism or drug interdiction. The Pentagon’s request for help with immigration enforcement, Gibbs said, “is obviously more sensitive because of the politics.”
“And because of the concern for the tactics, and disruption that some of those tactics are causing, in workplaces and communities,” Gibbs said.
Gibbs said Scott’s decision about whether or not to supply soldiers for immigration functions was “divorced” from those politics. He said the Department of Defense was seeking 12 Guard members to assist with administrative, logistical and clerical duties inside ICE detention facilities. Those duties, Gibbs said, “just didn’t meet the governor’s threshold for federalization of National Guard personnel.”
“There are circumstances … where the risk profile would justify that activation and that the governor would probably approve of, like if we were going to expand our counterterrorism mission or our counter-drug mission, or even if they were able to articulate what role state national guard assets might play in trying to find and secure individuals who are known to be dangerous criminals and who do need to be detained and deported,” he said. “But that’s not what they’re doing.”
In a press release last week, Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said the Department of Defense was invoking Title 32 to increase the National Guard’s role in ICE’s “immigration law enforcement mission.”
Active duty Marine Corps and Naval Reserve personnel who had been assigned to ICE facilities, Parnell said, were being sent back to their home stations. He said they would be replaced by National Guard soldiers whose duties would include “case management, transportation and logistical support, and clerical support for the in- and out-processing” of individuals in ICE detention.
Parnell said the transition will allow ICE officers to focus on “core law enforcement activities, significantly enhancing overall effectiveness.”
