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His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has ordered elements of a
Stryker brigade combat team and a general support aviation
battalion for the mission, the Pentagon announced. The forces
will arrive along the nearly 2,000-mile border in the coming
weeks.
The Defense Department's statement did not specify the size of
the deployment, but it was put at about 3,000 by the officials,
who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke
on condition of anonymity.
The Strykers are medium-armored wheeled personnel carriers.
Already, about 9,200 U.S. troops in total are at the southern
border, including 4,200 deployed under federal orders and about
5,000 National Guard troops under the control of governors.
The new troops will “reinforce and expand current border
security operations to seal the border and protect the
territorial integrity of the United States,” the Pentagon said.
Trump is determined to expand the military’s role in his effort
to shut down the border and send detained migrants back to their
home countries.
Military personnel have been sent to the border almost
continuously since the 1990s to help address migration, drug
trafficking and transnational crime.
The Washington Post first reported on the new deployment.
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