US Army unfurls fencing along border with Mexico

LAREDO: They started work in the cool of the morning and moved quickly, uncoiling reel after reel of vicious-looking fencing and tying it with barbed wire to green poles hammered into the ground.

Over the course of three days, a gleaming, shoulders-high barrier of concertina wire emerged like a silver snake along a lush riverbank, stretching as far as the eye could see.

It was the work of 100 or so US troops from the 19th Engineer Battalion, based in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Rather than finding themselves in a far-off warzone, the soldiers are in Laredo, a busy border town overlooking a stretch of the Rio Grande river in southwest Texas, carrying out controversial orders from President Donald Trump.

He has sent 5,800 troops to the border to delay the arrival of Central American migrants travelling through Mexico and towards the United States, in a move critics decry as a costly political stunt to galvanise supporters ahead of midterm elections earlier this month.

Before the election, he called the matter a “national emergency” and warned that so-called migrant caravans were an “invasion” with “some bad thugs and gang members”.

So far, the most visible aspect of Trump’s deployment is the fence, designed to corral asylum seekers towards organised points of entry into the United States.

Over the weekend, Lieutenant Alan Koepnick’s platoon could be seen stringing concertina wire, which is built to snag clothing, along one edge of a quiet riverside park near downtown Laredo.

Koepnick said some Laredo residents had voiced disquiet about the fencing and presence of US troops.

“But there’s also been a lot of support – people coming in, vets shaking our hands,” he added.

The border mission has put the supposedly non-political military in an uncomfortable spotlight.

Defence Secretary Jim Mattis has hit back at critics who say the Pentagon should not be doing Trump’s political bidding, saying “we don’t do stunts”.

The deployment will wrap up on Dec 15 and it is not clear what will happen to the wire fencing.

“If we are told to take it down, we will take it down with a smile on our faces, like good soldiers,” said Koepnick.