Trump and Fox News are working hard to turn immigration into a military issue.

Trump has already enmeshed the United States military in domestic law enforcement operations involving immigration to an unprecedented degree. He has authorized a major military buildup at the border. He has maximized the use of military planes for deportations, complete with the White House pumping out imagery of migrants getting frog-marched onto souped-up military aircraft. He sent the National Guard into Los Angeles amid large-scale protests there—and then sent in the Marines.

But an internal memo circulated inside the Department of Homeland Security suggests that Trump’s use of the military for domestic law enforcement on immigration could soon get worse. The memo—obtained by The New Republic—provides a glimpse into the thinking of top officials as they seek to involve the Defense Department more deeply in these domestic operations, and it has unnerved experts who believe it portends a frightening escalation.

The memo lays out the need to persuade top Pentagon officials to get much more serious about using the military to combat illegal immigration—and not just at the border. It suggests that DHS is anticipating many more uses of the military in urban centers, noting that L.A.-style operations may be needed “for years to come.” And it likens the threat posed by transnational gangs and cartels to having “Al Qaeda or ISIS cells and fighters operating freely inside America,” hinting at a ramped-up militarized posture inside the interior.

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The memo was authored by Philip Hegseth—the younger brother of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—who is a senior adviser to Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and DHS liaison officer to the Defense Department. As such it also sheds light on Hegseth the Younger’s role, which has been the subject of media speculation labeling him an obscure but influential figure in his brother’s MAGA orbit.

Fox News is in charge.

The larger context here is that the administration has taken extraordinary license in its invention of pretexts for draconian domestic operations. The administration has insisted we are under foreign “invasion” to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of people with little to no due process. Government agencies have hyped supposed evidence of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s MS-13 ties to justify illegally renditioning him to a Salvadoran prison. Trump has a long history of lying about crime to justify immigration crackdowns. He invented numerous fake pretexts for sending troops into L.A.

The memo suggests further operationalization of that tactic. “They see Los Angeles as a model to be replicated,” Lee said.

All this comes as ICE is about to receive well over $100 billion in new funds. The memo raises the question of what that use of military personnel detailed “within ICE and CBP” will look like with all that money.

In a sense, the administration seems to be supercharging immigration “invasion” agitprop to manufacture a sense of national trauma similar to the one that arose after the September 11 attacks. That led to another type of war-on-terror hyper-militarization at home (as well as abroad). The administration seems determined to outdo that—this time against the new internal enemy.

“Normalizing routine military support to law enforcement could create a kind of domestic ‘Forever War,’ but one that is uniquely dangerous,” the Brennan Center’s Nunn told me. “As the Founders well understood, a military that is turned inward is a threat to both democracy and individual liberty.”

Trump is cool with that.