The White House has been forced to deny that a draft memo suggesting it considered mobilising 100,000 national guard troops to round up and deport unauthorised immigrants, including millions living nowhere near the Mexico border, is current administration policy.



An 11-page draft memo obtained by the Associated Press calls for the unprecedented militarisation of immigration enforcement as far north as Portland, Oregon, and as far east as New Orleans, Louisiana.

Governors in the 11 states named would have a choice regarding whether to have their guard troops participate, according to the memo, which was written by the US homeland security secretary, John Kelly, a retired four-star marine general.

US immigrant communities scramble to make sense of raids: 'People are terrified' Read more

As Democrats condemned the proposal, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, told journalists: “That is 100% not true. It is false. It is irresponsible to be saying this.”

Using the present tense, he added: “There is no effort at all to round up, to utilise the national guard to round up illegal immigrants.”

The Department for Homeland Security echoed this language. “The Department is not considering mobilising the national guard,” said the department’s acting press secretary, Gillian Christensen, in an email.

But Spicer would not categorically state that such a roundup was never a subject of discussion at some level in the Trump administration. “I don’t know what could potentially be out there, but I know that there is no effort to do what is potentially suggested,” he said.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, as Trump headed to a Boeing plant in South Carolina, Spicer added: “It is not a White House document.” The AP’s document states that it is from Kelly and so would have originated from the Department of Homeland Security, not the White House.

Later, the deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, insisted that Kelly did not personally write the memo. “I don’t specifically know who put pen to paper but I know that it was not Secretary Kelly and it wasn’t at his direction,” she told reporters.

Asked if the memo was written during the transition, Sanders added: “I’m not aware on the exact timeline on when it happened but what I do know is that this White House and this president has had no plans in any capacity to use the national guard to round up.”



During last year’s presidential election campaign, Trump pledged to create a “deportation force” to deport the more than 11 million people living in the US illegally.



While national guard personnel have been used to assist with immigration-related missions on the US-Mexico border before, they have never been used as broadly or as far north.

The four states that border 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.

Chuck Schumer, the leading Democrat in the Senate, called the possibility of the roundups “despicable”.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Senator Chuck Schumer: ‘The fact that it might even be considered is appalling.’ Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

“That would be one of the most un-American things that would happen in the last century and I just hope that it’s not true,” Schumer told reporters. “The fact that it might even be considered is appalling.”

Democratic senator Kamala Harris of California added that the prospect of national guard members going door to door to check people’s documents was “deeply disturbing”, noting that the guard’s main responsibility was to help people in distress after natural disasters.



“Deploying them for any other purpose is a severe mismanagement of resources, an abuse of executive power, and conjures images of Japanese internment camps and mass deportations of Mexican immigrants under President Eisenhower. I challenge Republicans and Democrats, whether they are members of Congress or governors, to condemn this plan and ensure it never sees the light of day.”

The memo is addressed to the then acting heads of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and US Customs and Border Protection. It would have served as guidance to implement the wide-ranging executive order on immigration and border security that Trump signed on 25 January. Such memos are routinely issued to supplement executive orders.

The draft document has circulated among DHS staff over the last two weeks. As recently as last Friday, staffers in several offices reported discussions were under way.

If implemented, the impact could be significant. Nearly half of the 11.1 million people residing in the US without authorisation live in the 11 states, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on 2014 census data.

Also on Friday Trump toured a Boeing facility in Charleston, South Carolina, where the company unveiled its new Dreamliner aircraft. “What an amazing piece of art, what an amazing piece of work,” said the president, who has previously clashed with Boeing over the costs of a new Air Force One. He was accompanied on the tour by his daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to the president.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump addresses workers at the Boeing factory in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

Trump slipped back into campaign mode as he told workers he had come to “celebrate jobs” and the return of manufacturing plants, a core message that was seen as crucial to his election victory. “All of a sudden they’re coming back, and they’re going to be very happy about it, believe me. As your president I’m going to do everything I can to unleash the power of the American spirit and put our great people back to work. This is our mantra: buy American and hire American.”

Trump repeated his threat that any company that lays off American workers to move to abroad will face a “substantial penalty” when trying to sell their products in the US. “We are going to fight for every last American job,” he added.

Companies were bringing jobs back “because the business climate has already changed”, he argued. “When there is a level playing field, American workers will always, always win. But we don’t have a level playing field. Very shortly you will have a level playing field again. Because when Americans workers win, America as a country wins big league.”

He added: “From now on, it’s going to be America first.”

The tour came a day after Trump’s first solo press conference as president, a wild 77 minutes littered with grievances and falsehoods and caused jaws to drop around the world. But not for the first time, while mainstream media were critical, some conservative outlets hailed it as a bravura performance.



“Thank you for all of the nice statements on the Press Conference yesterday,” Trump tweeted on Friday. “Rush Limbaugh said one of greatest ever. Fake media not happy!”

Limbaugh is a rightwing talkshow host fond of conspiracy theories who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the US and eligible to be president. He said after the press conference: “Just what the doctor ordered. This is Donald Trump going over the head of the media right now to the American people. Advancing his domestic agenda and being totally transparent with these people.”

Trump also tweeted about his search for a national security adviser to replace retired general Michael Flynn, forced to quit after 24 days because he misled officials over his discussion of sanctions with Russia’s ambassador to the US.

In yet another setback, it emerged that Trump’s next choice, retired vice-admiral Robert Harward, had turned down the offer. Harward, a senior executive at Lockheed Martin, cited family and financial reasons for not taking the job, Reuters reported.

Trump made no reference to this as he tweeted: “General Keith Kellogg, who I have known for a long time, is very much in play for NSA – as are three others.”

Meanwhile it was reported on Friday that Trump has appointed Mike Dubke, founder of Crossroads Media, a conservative firm that specialises in political advertising, as White House communications director. Spicer had previously been doing the job in addition to being press secretary. Many see the post as unenviable in light of Trump’s freewheeling style and rapid-fire tweets.

The Associated Press contributed to this report