I’m a former Marine who calls Orlando home. Like so many Floridians, I’ll spend Veterans Day thinking about the people I served with — ordinary citizens who raised their right hand, missed birthdays and ballgames, and trusted our leaders to use the military wisely and sparingly.
This year, I’m thinking about our Florida National Guard.
Across our state, Guard soldiers have been pulled from their families and civilian jobs to backstop unprecedented and extreme deportation operations — guarding horrific mass detention sites, transporting detainees, and performing tasks that look a lot like policing and nothing like what we trained for. These are repugnant duties for people who signed up to help neighbors in hurricanes, not to become a domestic deportation force.
On Veterans Day, we should thank them by bringing them home.
I say this as someone who helped organize an open letter from hundreds of Florida veterans earlier this year opposing the deployment of active-duty Marines to assist ICE. We argued then — and I repeat now — that soldiers are trained for combat, not law enforcement. When you insert military personnel into civilian enforcement, you raise the temperature, blur lines of authority, and make tragic mistakes more likely. You make it seem that Americans using our freedom of speech to protest our government’s policies are an enemy of the state. It’s dangerous for the public and unfair to the troops.
After veterans spoke up, those Marines were withdrawn. That was the right call.
But instead of ending the militarization, Florida simply shifted the burden to our Guard, under state control. The legal technicalities may differ; the practical effect does not. Our family members and neighbors serving in uniform are still being used in roles that erode the crucial boundary between military and civilian roles. When ICE agents, local police and soldiers all appear in similar camouflage uniforms and tactical gear, the public can’t tell who is who — and the trust our military has earned over generations suffers.
There’s another cost we rarely talk about: the family and financial strain. Guard members are citizen-soldiers. They’re teachers, mechanics, nurses, small-business owners. When they’re mobilized for months at a time, paychecks shrink, businesses struggle, childcare plans fall apart, and mortgages come due either way. We are entering the holiday season with many Florida families already stretched by inflation, uncertainty about federal funding, and cuts to basic programs like SNAP some rely on. Pulling a parent out of the household now — to stand posts at detention sites — is not “law and order.” It’s a recipe for hardship.
Floridians across the political spectrum can agree on some basics:
The military should not be used as a domestic police force.
Immigration enforcement should be a civilian mission carried out with accountability and care, in a way consistent with our values and the Constitution.
When we call up the Guard, it should be for true emergencies — hurricanes, wildfires, infrastructure failures — not to fill staffing gaps in a highly-partisan and extreme mass deportation agenda.
This is just common sense and the foundation of the oath we swore. I served alongside conservatives, liberals and independents who would all tell you the same thing: politicizing the military is reckless and counterproductive.
So here’s what I’m asking — as a Marine veteran, a dad, and a Floridian:
President Donald Trump: End the request for Florida Guard, or any troops, to perform immigration-related duties. Keep the armed forces out of civilian policing.
Gov. Ron DeSantis: Stand down the state missions that pull Guardsmen into open-ended detention and deportation roles. Use our Guard for disaster response and real emergencies — their actual job.
Florida’s congressional delegation and local officials: Speak up. Press for civilian staffing and transparency at any detention facilities in our state. Insist on clear lines between law enforcement and the military.
If Florida truly wants to honor veterans this week, let’s start by honoring the citizen-soldiers who live next door. Let’s relieve them of these assignments, reunite them with their families, and refocus our Guard on the lifesaving missions Floridians actually depend on.
That’s not partisan. That’s patriotic.
