A drumbeat of suspensions of top Pentagon officials continued into a second day on Wednesday with a defense official confirming that Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to the deputy defense secretary, was suspended.
Carroll is the third top political appointee to be suspended from his job in connection with a leak probe -- apparently into a news story about a proposed top secret China briefing to Elon Musk -- that also ensnared Dan Caldwell, a top adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Darin Selnick, Hegseth's deputy chief of staff.
The move has surprised and puzzled officials in the Pentagon since Caldwell and Selnick were trusted advisers who were close to Hegseth.
Earlier Wednesday, Axios reported that both Caldwell and Selnick were being investigated[2] as part of a probe into who told The New York Times about plans for the Pentagon to provide a top-secret briefing on China to Musk, the world's richest man who has been empowered by President Donald Trump to dramatically slash and reshape the federal government.
The original news story of the planned China briefing, which was published more than a month ago[3], said that the Pentagon had scheduled a briefing for the billionaire on the U.S. military's plan for any war that might break out with China. It cited two officials as the sources for that news and two others who confirmed broader details.
Reporters asked Hegseth about the firings on Wednesday during the open portion of his meeting with El Salvador's defense minister, but they went unanswered.
Prior to coming to the Pentagon in January, Carroll worked at the defense contractor Anduril Industries, according to his LinkedIn profile[4]. He also worked at the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center as its chief operating officer under the Biden administration but, according to Politico[5], he was fired for creating a hostile work environment.
Meanwhile, both Caldwell and Selnick were close allies of Hegseth. Both men worked at the same nonprofit -- Concerned Veterans for America -- and Caldwell even worked there when Hegseth was running the organization.
At the Pentagon, both men were given major roles in the three months since Trump returned to office.
By late March, Caldwell was designated as Hegseth's point person for top national security officials and the vice president, according to the defense secretary's unsecured conversation in a Signal app group chat[6] with other top administration officials -- which mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic -- about plans for military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
One defense official, who was granted anonymity by Military.com to speak candidly, even described Caldwell as being like a family member to Hegseth.
Selnick was recently promoted from that position to be Hegseth's deputy chief of staff.
Military.com reached out to both Caldwell and Selnick but did not receive any replies.
The fallout from the alleged leak investigation is not the first shake-up of staff in the top offices of the Pentagon.
Last month, Hegseth's office also sidelined another senior political appointee, John Ullyot, who had acted as the top Pentagon spokesman before Sean Parnell took over the role.
Ullyot's reassignment came after he issued an especially blistering statement defending the removal of an online article honoring trailblazing Black baseball player and Army[11] veteran Jackie Robinson.
Ullyot issued two statements on the matter in which he argued that Hegseth's staff did not view or highlight Robinson -- along with other female service members and troops with minority backgrounds who were censored from Defense Department media -- "through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex."
Robinson is a historic figure in baseball because he was the first Black player to play in the major leagues in the 1940s, during a time of segregation and systemic racism in the U.S.
In a video posted days after Ullyot's ousting, Parnell largely reiterated Ullyot's message[12] but admitted that "some important content was inadvertently pulled offline" and blamed artificial intelligence tools "and other software."
He also alleged that content was being both "mistakenly removed" and "maliciously removed." But the Defense Department also censored much more media on female, minority and LGBTQ+ troops that has not been restored, and has undertaken a wider campaign to ban books[13] from military libraries, including[14] the U.S. Naval Academy[15].
A dozen students at Defense Department grade schools across the globe are suing the department after books were removed from libraries, school yearbooks were allegedly censored, and class curriculums were sanitized to implement President Donald Trump's anti-diversity and anti-LGBTQ+ executive orders.
Alleging First Amendment violations, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday evening against the Department of Defense Education Activity and the Pentagon on behalf of 12 students in pre-K through 11th grade from six military families who attend schools on bases in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy and Japan.
"The implementation of these EOs, without any due process or parental or professional input, is a violation of our children's right to access information that prevents them from learning about their own histories, bodies and identities," Natalie Tolley, a parent from one of the military families suing, said in a statement released by the ACLU. "I have three daughters, and they, like all children, deserve access to books that both mirror their own life experiences and that act as windows that expose them to greater diversity. The administration has now made that verboten in DoDEA schools."
A DoDEA spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday, saying that "as a matter of policy, the DoDEA does not comment on ongoing litigation."
Among his first acts in office, Trump ordered every federal agency to get rid of all policies and materials related to "gender ideology," a right-wing term for being transgender, and the ill-defined concept of "diversity, equity and inclusion."
At DoDEA schools, books have been pulled from school libraries ranging from classics such as "To Kill a Mockingbird," to a picture biography about the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to an award-winning fiction novel about a transgender teen participating in a national debate competition, to Vice President JD Vance's own memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," according to the lawsuit.
Class curriculums have also been sterilized to remove content the administration objects to, according to the lawsuit. In addition to the widely reported elimination of gender and sexuality chapters from Advanced Placement Psychology textbooks, the lawsuit also alleges that textbooks for health classes have been censored.
Chapters that have been cut from health class textbooks include: "Communicable Diseases: Sexually Transmitted Diseases;" "Unwanted Sexual Activity: Sexual Harassment;" "Human Reproductive System, Menstrual Cycle, and Fetal Development;" "Abuse and Neglect;" and "Adolescence and Puberty," according to the suit.
Middle school health classes also are no longer teaching a chapter called "What Is Sexuality?" that "simply defines terms, accurately and without bias, that are commonly used in everyday conversation," the lawsuit says.
Student yearbooks have also been instructed not to include "any visual depictions, written content or editorial choices that would directly or indirectly support the instruction, advancement, and/or promotion of 'gender ideology' and/or 'social transition,'" according to the lawsuit.
And, in line with a Defense Department memo declaring "identity months dead," Black History Month assemblies and Women's History Month events were banned, the lawsuit says. While "host nation engagement" events are allowed, the lawsuit calls that distinction "nonsensical," citing the fact that a Guam History and Chamorro Heritage Day celebration was allowed under that category despite the fact that Guam is a U.S. territory and not a host nation.
"Students in DoDEA schools, though they are members of military families, have the same First Amendment rights as all students," Emerson Sykes, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in a statement. "Like everyone else, they deserve classrooms where they are free to read, speak and learn about themselves, their neighbors and the world around them."
DoDEA's implementation of Trump's orders has sparked a level of pushback not typically seen publicly from military families.
A narrow stretch of federal lands that runs along a major portion of the U.S.-Mexico border has been transferred to the military in hopes of increasing migrant apprehensions under a new memo signed by President Donald Trump.
The Roosevelt Reservation, the 60-foot-wide strip of land that stretches across California, Arizona and New Mexico, will be treated as Department of Defense property, meaning those who walk on the land could be subject to detention and likely legal action.
Trump's memo released publicly Friday stated the effort "will initially implement this memorandum on a limited sector of federal lands designated by the secretary of defense." A defense official told Military.com that the Department of the Interior will soon pass over jurisdiction of the land but had not as of Monday afternoon, adding that military apprehension efforts on the Roosevelt Reservation will initially take place near Fort Huachuca[1], Arizona.
Trump's ordered transfer of the federal land to the Department of Defense marks a new and unprecedented frontier in modern U.S. history[3] for the use of the military in his crackdown on immigrants and efforts to seal America's southern border with Mexico. Military.com spoke with legal experts who expressed concern about the Roosevelt Reservation's militarization, and also recently visited the southern border of California to witness troops' operations firsthand just prior to the memo's release.
The military is not legally allowed to take on law enforcement activities except in certain rare cases, and putting troops in charge of migrant apprehensions now conducted by police or immigration and border agents pushes the boundaries of the law, according to legal experts.
Prior to Trump's memo last week, soldiers had already begun conducting patrols along the barrier wall separating the U.S. and Mexico in an effort to detect and track suspected illegal activity. A U.S. Northern Command order in late March gave troops the ability to patrol border routes, something that the command said would give them more "maneuverability" in support of their Customs and Border Protection counterparts.
Those patrols included dedicated military assets, such as the Stryker[4], an armored vehicle largely meant to transport troops to and from missions. The inclusion of that equipment marks a significant shift from active-duty border missions of the past, in which service members were often limited to Border Patrol vehicles or optics without the ability to move from stationary observation posts along the border.
The Roosevelt Reservation was first established in the early 1900s by then-President Theodore Roosevelt to stop smuggling efforts into the country. Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the nonprofit Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, told Military.com in an interview that the latest memo takes the original purpose of the land and puts it into unchartered territory.
"It's a quantum leap, because the original designation of the land did not come along with militarizing the zone and sort of bootstrapping a way for soldiers to arrest migrants or to enforce drug trafficking laws at the border," Goitein said.
The move appears aimed at navigating around Posse Comitatus -- a federal act stopping the U.S. military from performing certain law enforcement duties -- and Goitein questioned the legality of the move as a whole.
"This is not incidental; this is not because something unexpected happened," she said. "They are setting out to arrest and detain migrants by building this installation, and that is not consistent with Posse Comitatus. It just isn't."
Detention Facility Under Construction
A Military.com in-depth feature[5] last month detailed that the plan for the Roosevelt Reservation was awaiting Trump's signature before being put into action.
The report also said that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorized the Army[6] to assume control and management of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for construction, maintenance and upkeep of the existing processing center at Fort Bliss[7] in El Paso, Texas -- a sprawling military installation along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, construction is underway for the Fort Bliss detention facility.
The Army last week began prepping the site at Fort Bliss for the construction of the new migrant detention facility expected to hold as many as 5,000 people, according to two Army officials briefed on the matter. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans publicly. That preparation has included 1st Armored Division soldiers clearing rocks and flattening dirt with bulldozers.
Details about the composition of the detainee population remain unclear, including whether the facility will hold both individuals deemed security risks and migrant families. Bliss was used to house thousands of Afghans during a major Biden administration resettlement effort after U.S. troops pulled out of the two-decade war in 2021.
Goitein said that providing that detention space is not unprecedented, but how officials may use the military in future operations at the detention facility is where legal concerns may begin to appear.
"This is part of an overall blurring of the line between military and law enforcement in the immigration space that we're seeing throughout the Trump administration's actions, and that line has to remain very clear under the Posse Comitatus Act," Goitein said. "This kind of blurring of that line is not legal, and it's dangerous."
The Trump administration has already blurred the lines of legality in its nationwide deportations. On Monday, Trump and visiting El Salvador President Nayib Bukele met at the White House and said they would not return Kilmar Abrego Garcia[8], a Maryland father and legal resident who was mistakenly deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison by the administration, back to the U.S. despite an order by the Supreme Court.
Although the new detention facility is being built on Fort Bliss, officials emphasized that uniformed service members will not oversee daily operations. Instead, the site will be jointly managed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Pro Publica reported[9] the contract to build the camp has been awarded to Deployed Resources, a private company specializing in massive long-term-use tents.
The company is known for erecting large-scale, tent-based infrastructure, which officials say allows for faster deployment compared to traditional infrastructure -- though it's unclear whether those structures could adequately house a large number of people and address sanitation and health needs.
Changing Border Mission
The Pentagon has deployed a force of roughly 10,000 troops to the border in an effort to secure it. That is only part -- albeit a significant part -- of the military's role in the immigration mission, which also has included deportation flights, migrant detention at Guantanamo Bay and now construction of facilities on U.S. soil, efforts that have come together rapidly in less than 90 days.
Military.com recently spent time with soldiers belonging to a task force mostly made up of military police deployed near San Diego at California's border, where some service members described their foot patrols along the barrier wall prior to the president's most recent memo. They were not using Strykers.
"When we first got here, we were pretty much static along the border," said Lt. Col. Phillip Mason, the commander of Task Force-716, a unit composed mostly of military police. "Since then, we have been able to do patrolling. We've been able to -- instead of just sitting behind a camera -- we can move back and forth along the border," adding that it allows his soldiers "a better ability to understand what's going on."
Sgt. DeAndre Swinson, an acting squad leader assigned to the border and sergeant of the guard for soldiers manning observation posts, said that he had been on two patrols since Northern Command authorized units to do so, taking groups of about four armed soldiers at a time along the border barrier to report to CBP agents anything suspicious they might see.
"If it's on the patrol, we report immediately through [our] radio, and you'll tell them exactly how you see it, what you see," he said. When asked what he is looking for on the patrols, Swinson said "anything that looks out of the ordinary," adding that reports to nearby Border Patrol agents include the "five Ws" -- who, what, when, where and why.
Specifically, they are looking for border crossings and "spotters," a term commonly referring to individuals -- to include suspected cartel or smuggling groups -- monitoring law enforcement or military activity along the border in order to circumvent detection in an effort to cross people, drugs or contraband into the U.S.
On these patrols, soldiers are required to abide by the standing rules for the use of force, also known as SRUF, which dictates what kinds of force they can and can't use if faced with a threatening situation.
For Task Force-716, those rules did not change when they started doing the patrols, Mason said, adding that as of last Thursday, his troops had not had any direct contact with migrants crossing the border in the nearly three months they'd been in San Diego.
"There's times where it's seen from anywhere from 500 meters to a mile away," he said Thursday. "But not eye-to-eye, face-to-face kind of contact, and a lot of that is by design. Our soldiers aren't in a capacity where they should be detaining, apprehending." He added that they are allowed to provide medical treatment to migrants should they hurt themselves attempting to traverse the barrier wall, for example.
But operations along the border are now evolving rapidly as Trump and his administration move forward with plans to expand the military's role in immigration enforcement.
By the time Military.com's coverage of the troops at San Diego ended Friday afternoon, the president had issued the memorandum authorizing the use of the Roosevelt Reservation.
That order could now indeed put troops face-to-face with migrants in a way that has not happened in recent border missions -- and what that will mean or look like for those troops is still unclear.
For more than seven decades, the Caisson Platoon of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as "The Old Guard," has provided horse-drawn caisson funeral services at Arlington National Cemetery, Va. — a tradition formalized in 1948 and rooted in 19th-century
