'Volunteer Force' Called On For ICE Mass Deportations

LOS ANGELES, CA — The Department of Defense on Wednesday urged its civilian employees to sign up for a "volunteer force" to support President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign.

Employees would be deployed to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection sites for assignments that can include planning raids and patrols, "managing the physical flow of detained illegal aliens from arrest to deportation," and data entry, according to a job application posted on the federal government's employment portal.

The call-up was confirmed by Patch through a DOD civilian worker who was invited to join the "volunteer force" for a six-month detail on Wednesday.

"The Secretary of Defense has authorized DoD civilian employees to participate in details to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to contribute to its operations along the Southern Border and its internal immigration enforcement activities," reads the email, according to 404 Media. “Selected Department employees will have a chance to offer critical support to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they fulfill the President’s intent to ensure a safe and orderly immigration system.”

The email references a memo sent by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in June to his Pentagon subordinates in which he wrote, "I am authorizing the detail of Department of Defense (DoD) civilian employees to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to support its operations at the United States southern border and with internal immigration enforcement."

The effort to bolster the immigration enforcement workforce is the latest effort by the Trump administration this summer to redirect federal resources to fulfill his campaign promise of mass deportations.

Much of those efforts have focused on Los Angeles County, the nation's most populous county. One third of its 10 million residents were born abroad, U.S. Census data shows.

This summer, federal officials deployed the Marines to the region and seized control of the California National Guard, ordering them to report to LA in response to widespread protests against immigration enforcement.

While Wednesday's government job posting for the "volunteer force" stipulates that civilian participants "will not perform law enforcement functions," recent raids in the Southland illustrate the kind of complex planning that's involved in rounding up people, sometimes by the dozens.

At least nine people were taken by federal agents between raids at two Long Beach car washes on Sunday. One of those actions was caught on video, which shows agents chasing down workers, one of whom makes a desperate attempt to flee by trying to crawl through a hole in a fence.

As is frequently the case in Southland raids, bystanders shouted at and record immigration agents during the raid.

"This is a shame. This is a shame, a shame, a shame," one woman called out to agents. "They are not even doing anything. Look what they did — like he's an animal. He's not. He's a human being."

Last month, over 100 members of the California National Guard and federal agents in Humvees, on horseback and in other vehicles descended on the immigrant center of MacArthur Park in Los Angeles for an operation.

The immigration raids across the Southland have often involved highly politicized events and violent interactions with the public, including United States citizens.

Since June, a man died fleeing a Home Depot raid in Monrovia, bystanders have been wrestled to the ground and arrested for allegedly obstructing arrests or assaulting agents, a pregnant U.S. citizen was taken into custody, a disabled student was arrested outside school, U.S. Border Patrol agents rammed a car with a baby inside, and agents swarmed a street outside Gov. Gavin Newsom's press conference last week.

On Tuesday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a brief in support of a lawsuit challenging U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection’s stops of Southern California as unconstitutional and unlawful.

“The Trump Administration is conducting immigration stops of California residents based solely off the color of their skin, the language that they speak, or the job that they work in a brazen violation of the Fourth Amendment,” said Bonta. “These immigration raids are not about detaining violent criminals — they’re about meeting arbitrary quotas, no matter the cost. It’s not just immoral, it’s unconstitutional. I urge the court to block ICE and CBP from employing these racially-motivated, unscrupulous tactics and allow our communities to return to peace.”