Key points
- An initial wave will include around 1,500 troops
- Two C-17s and two C-130s — are being sent to support migrant repatriation flights
- There are already roughly 2,200 active-duty forces at the border
ISLAMABAD: Just two days after the US President Donald Trump took oath of office, thousands of additional active-duty US troops are being ordered to the southern US border with Mexico.
President Donald Trump has rallied his supporters on an anti-immigrant platform and his focus has been on stopping the movement of what the political right calls the “illegal aliens” coming from across the southern border.
According to CNN, there are already roughly 2,200 active-duty forces at the border as part of Joint Task Force-North, US Northern Command’s border mission based out of El Paso, Texas.
Initial wave
They help support US Customs and Border Protection’s work there, performing mostly logistical and bureaucratic tasks like data entry, detection and monitoring, and vehicle maintenance.
It is not yet clear which specific units are being ordered to the border, but an initial wave will include around 1,500 troops.
“First operations for them should commence within the next 24-48 hours, they’re moving right now, as we sit here,” a senior military official told reporters on Wednesday.
Aircrafts being sent
Acting Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses said he directed the Defense Department to “begin augmenting its forces at the southwest border” with 1,500 ground personnel “as well as helicopters with associated crews, and intelligence analysts to support increased detection and monitoring efforts.”
The senior military official said four total aircraft — two C-17s and two C-130s — are being sent to San Diego and El Paso to support migrant repatriation flights. The air crews for those aircraft are not included in the 1,500 ground troops being sent.
“[T]he Department will provide military airlift to support DHS deportation flights of more than five thousand illegal aliens from the San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas, sectors detained by Customs and Border Protection,” Salesses said in a statement. “DHS will provide inflight law enforcement, and the State Department will obtain the requisite diplomatic clearances and provide host-nation notification.”
“Just the beginning”
“This is just the beginning,” Salesses added.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also confirmed the number to reporters at the White House on Wednesday.
“President Trump signed an executive order – 1500 additional troops to United States southern border. This comes off of his day-one action…to direct the Department of Defense to make homeland security a core mission of the agency,” Leavitt said.
The Trump administration asked the military earlier this week to be prepared to deploy up to 10,000 active-duty troops immediately, setting off a scramble inside the Pentagon.
Military officials have pushed back on that because they believe that sending so many troops to the border at once could pull them away from other mission requirements elsewhere in the world and strain resources, according to CNN.