Grand Theft America / Receipt power-2026-08-14-the-office-of-legal-counsel-says-soldiers--0b431dd
The Office of Legal Counsel says soldiers may arrest civilians who trespass in a national defense area after they leave it
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel released an opinion concluding that military personnel may arrest individuals who unlawfully enter a national defense area after those individuals have left it, and that such arrests do not violate the Posse Comitatus Act.
What happened
The opinion, released on 14 August, concludes that military personnel can arrest individuals who unlawfully enter a national defense area after they have left the area. It relies on both a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act and the long-standing implied military purpose doctrine. The Posse Comitatus Act, enacted in 1878, criminalizes using any part of the active-duty military to execute the laws unless expressly authorized. The opinion stipulates that military personnel would operate in the immediate vicinity of the national defense area.
Why it matters
An Office of Legal Counsel opinion is the executive branch's own binding account of what it may lawfully do, so the boundary it draws is the boundary that will be operated to until a court says otherwise. The line this one draws is geographic and elastic: once arrest authority follows a person out of the declared area rather than stopping at its fence, the limit on where soldiers may take civilians into custody is set by where the executive chooses to declare the area, and the same reasoning is available wherever a national defense area is established.
Receipt details
- Phase 2
- Assert extraordinary powers
- Deploy troops to U.S. cities
