White House Denies AP Report

Style Magazine Newswire | 2/17/2017, 1 p.m.
The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized …
Donald Trump gives inaugural address.

(CBS/AP) -- The Trump administration is considering a proposal to mobilize as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, according to a draft memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The 11-page document calls for the unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer, however, called the AP report “100 percent not true.”

“It is false. It is irresponsible to be saying this,” Spicer told reporters on Air Force One Friday. “There is no effort to utilize the national guard to round up immigrants.”

He added that the draft memo “is not a White House document.”

To an Associated Press reporter, Spicer said, “I wish you guys had asked before you tweeted.”

The AP reporter noted that the outlet asked multiple times before publication, according to pool reports of the exchange.

As for the draft memo obtained by the AP, four states that border on Mexico are included in the proposal - California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas - but it also encompasses seven states contiguous to those four - Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.

Governors in the 11 states would have a choice whether to have their guard troops participate, according to the memo, written by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general.

While National Guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration-related missions on the U.S.-Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.

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