Pentagon to deploy up to 1,500 U.S. troops to Mexican border: reports

The Pentagon volition statesman deploying arsenic galore arsenic 1,500 progressive work troops to assistance unafraid the confederate border successful the coming days, U.S. officials said Wednesday, putting successful question plans President Donald Trump laid retired successful enforcement orders soon aft helium took bureau to ace down connected immigration.

Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses was expected to motion the deployment orders connected Wednesday, but it wasn’t yet wide which troops oregon units volition go, and the full could fluctuate. It remains to beryllium seen if they volition extremity up doing instrumentality enforcement, which would enactment American troops successful a dramatically antithetic relation for the archetypal clip successful decades.

The officials spoke connected information of anonymity due to the fact that the announcement has not yet been made. Reuters besides reported connected the move, citing a U.S. authoritative speaking connected information of anonymity.

The progressive work forces would articulation the astir 2,500 U.S. National Guard and Reserve forces already there. There are presently nary progressive work troops moving on the astir 2,000-mile border.

The troops are expected to beryllium utilized to enactment Border Patrol agents, with logistics, proscription and operation of barriers. They person done akin duties successful the past, erstwhile some Trump and erstwhile President Joe Biden sent progressive work troops to the border.

Troops are prohibited by instrumentality from doing instrumentality enforcement duties nether the Posse Comitatus Act, but that whitethorn change. Trump has directed done enforcement bid that the incoming caput of defence and incoming homeland information main study backmost wrong 90 days if they deliberation an 1807 instrumentality called the Insurrection Act should beryllium invoked. That would let those troops to beryllium utilized successful civilian instrumentality enforcement connected U.S. soil.

The past clip the enactment was invoked was successful 1992 during rioting successful Los Angeles successful protestation of the acquittal of 4 constabulary officers charged with beating Rodney King.

The wide expected deployment, coming successful Trump’s archetypal week successful office, was an aboriginal measurement successful his long-touted program to grow the usage of the subject on the border. In 1 of his archetypal orders connected Monday, Trump directed the defence caput to travel up with a program to “seal the borders” and repel “unlawful wide migration.”

On Tuesday, conscionable arsenic Trump fired the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Linda Fagan, the work announced it was surging much cutter ships, craft and unit to the “Gulf of America” — a motion to the president’s directive to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump said during his inaugural address on Monday that “I volition state a nationalist exigency astatine our confederate border. All amerciable introduction volition instantly beryllium halted, and we volition statesman the process of returning millions and millions of transgression aliens backmost to the places successful which they came.”

Military unit person been sent to the borderline astir continuously since the 1990s to assistance code migration. cause trafficking and transnational crime.

In enforcement orders signed Monday, Trump suggested the subject would assistance the Department of Homeland Security with “detention space, proscription (including aircraft), and different logistics services.”

There are astir 20,000 Border Patrol agents, and portion the confederate borderline is wherever astir are located, they’re besides liable for protecting the bluish borderline with Canada. Usually agents are tasked with looking for cause smugglers oregon radical trying to participate the state undetected.

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More recently, however, they person had to woody with migrants actively seeking retired Border Patrol successful bid to get refuge successful America — taxing the agency’s staff.

In his archetypal term, Trump ordered progressive work troops to the borderline successful effect to a caravan of migrants dilatory making its mode done Mexico toward the United States successful 2018. More than 7,000 progressive work troops were sent to Texas, Arizona and California, including subject police, an battle chopper battalion, assorted communications, aesculapian and office units, combat engineers, planners and nationalist affairs units.

At the time, the Pentagon was adamant that progressive work troops would not bash instrumentality enforcement. So they spent overmuch of their clip transporting Border Patrol agents to and on the border, helping them erect further conveyance barriers and fencing on the border, assisting them with communications and providing immoderate information for borderline cause camps.

The subject besides provided Border Patrol agents with aesculapian care, pre-packaged meals and impermanent housing.

It’s besides not yet wide if the Trump medication volition bid the subject to usage bases to location detained migrants.

Bases antecedently person been utilized for that purpose, and aft the 2021 autumn of Kabul to the Taliban, they were utilized to big thousands of Afghan evacuees. The facilities struggled to enactment the influx.

In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered Goodfellow Air Force Base successful San Angelo, Texas, to hole to location arsenic galore arsenic 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children, but the additional space yet wasn’t needed and Goodfellow was determined not to person the infrastructure indispensable to enactment the surge.

In March 2021, the Biden medication greenlighted utilizing spot astatine Fort Bliss, Texas, for a detention installation to supply beds for up to 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children arsenic borderline crossings accrued from Mexico.

The facility, operated by DHS, was rapidly overrun, with acold excessively fewer lawsuit managers for the thousands of children that arrived, vulnerability to utmost upwind and particulate and unsanitary conditions, a 2022 inspector wide study found.

—Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report. With further files from Reuters.