Exclusive-US Democratic lawmaker asks Pentagon watchdog to probe if deportation flight broke law

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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.

“This clearly would have been in violation of various immigration laws and policies,” Reed said in a speech on the Senate floor.

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.

A spokesperson for the Inspector General said it had received the letter. The Pentagon declined to comment.

Reed, in the letter seen by Reuters on Thursday, 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.”

In a legal filing on April 23, a senior DHS official submitted written testimony that the flight to El Salvador had “no DHS personnel onboard.” DHS also declined to take responsibility for the flight, deferring to the Department of Defense.

Trump, a Republican who made immigration a priority during his election campaign, has moved aggressively on the issue since taking office, sending more troops to the southern border and pledging to deport millions of immigrants in the United States illegally.

The administration has tried to encourage migrants to leave voluntarily by threatening steep fines, attempted to strip away legal status, and carried out deportations to Guantanamo Bay and El Salvador.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that for the first time the U.S. military could fly migrants to Libya.

On the Senate floor, Reed said that sending a military aircraft to Libya would have endangered U.S. troops and sending migrants there was unconscionable.

On Wednesday, a U.S. judge said any effort by the Trump administration to deport migrants to Libya would clearly violate a prior court order barring officials from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first weighing whether they would risk persecution or torture.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said that DHS could not “evade” his order by transferring responsibility to the Defense Department or any other agency.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)