More troops assigned border duty
The Pentagon’s activeduty force along the Southwestern border will be substantially larger than it has been since it was downsized in time for Christmas.
Defense officials say they’ll deploy 3,750 troops to the border to support the president’s continued operation there, with the total coming to more than 6,000 when National Guard soldiers are included.
As January closed, 2,350 troops were on the border, the largest number, 1,100, in California. The National Guard Bureau said 1,175 part-time soldiers were in Texas, 650 in Arizona, 350 in California and 114 in New Mexico. All are providing support to state and federal law enforcement agencies.
On Tuesday, however, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, ordered most of New Mexico’s guardsmen withdrawn from the border, except for the state’s southwest corner, where Central American families have been arriving in increasing numbers, according to published reports.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that, based on Department of Defense figures and independent analysis, the cost of the deployment at the border could approach an estimated $1 billion by the end of the fiscal yearm should it continue until then.
Just how the newly arriving active-duty force will be distributed isn’t clear. Its total number won’t top the original mission requirement, 5,800 soldiers, that President Donald Trump ordered to the border a week before the Nov. 6 midterm elections.
Announcing the new deployment Tuesday in his State of the Union address, Trump spoke of a “tremendous onslaught” of illegal immigrants at the border. He has often suggested the soldiers would be employed to fight them off, particularly those arriving in caravans from Central America to ask for asylum.
Earlier this week, Trump tweeted, “Tremendous numbers of people are coming up through Mexico in the hopes of flooding our Southern Border. We have sent additional military. We will build a Human Wall if necessary. If we had a real Wall, this would be a nonevent!”
U.S. Army North, based in San Antonio, has repeatedly said the soldiers would not be used to physically prevent immigrants from crossing the border. There have been no reports of soldiers arresting, detaining or intercepting migrants, a job Army North has said is reserved to Customs and Border Protection officers.
The soldiers in Arizona and California are providing engineering and military police support for ports of entry designated by the Department of Homeland Security, and the Defense Department has provided aviation units to transport U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel in those states. It also has maintained the capability to provide emergency medical support to federal agents and migrants when needed.
The original mission — unrolling razor wire to shore up existing fences and supporting law enforcement agencies — began to wind down as Christmas approached.
Trump has repeatedly spoken of his readiness to declare a national emergency to bypass Congress, which appropriates funding, and use existing but yet-to-be dedicated military funds for construction of a border wall.
Lujan Grisham , the New Mexico governor, said she rejected “the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the southern border” and said her state “will not take part in the president’s charade of border fearmongering by misusing our diligent National Guard troops,” the Washington Post reported.