US citizens from migrant backgrounds are joining the US military in a bid to protect their families from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They hope a little-known provision which protects serving personnel’s families from deportation will save relatives from Trump’s fascist private militia.

Their desperation is leading them to enlist and to adopt a 20-year-old scheme to protect their families.

US soldier named Alex Jimenez was killed in Iraq in 2007. Jimenez’s body wasn’t recovered for a year. His wife, who had arrived in the US “illegally” was deported in the interim. The George W. Bush government stepped in after public outcry. She was granted residency. The ‘Parole in Place’ initiative was born in that moment.

The NYT says people are particularly joining the National Guard — roughly the US equivalent of the British armed forces reserves. The enduring US tradition, however, is to have state-level militias. British militias were a repressive internal security force. A local militia famously attacked and killed unarmed protestors at Peterloo, Manchester, in 1819. The British state abolished the militia in 1908.