The new crop of troops who will be deployed by Saturday will join the roughly 2,100 National Guard forces already operating \u2013 primarily in logistics and background support missions \u2013 on the southern border in support of U. S. Customs and Border Protection agents.<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2014 The Pentagon will deploy 5,200 active-duty troops to the U. S.-Mexico border to help curb illegal immigration, officials said Monday following President Donald Trump’s repeated warning that migrants in southern Mexico making their way toward the United States pose a national security threat.
Already Monday, some 800 active-duty troops were on their way to Texas to \u201charden the southern border,\u201d said Air Force Gen. Terrance O’Shaughnessy, the chief of U. S. Northern Command. The new crop of troops who will be deployed by Saturday will join the roughly 2,100 National Guard forces already operating \u2013 primarily in logistics and background support missions \u2013 on the southern border in support of U. S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
\u00ab\u00a0Our concept of operations is to flow in our military assets with a priority to build up southern Texas and then Arizona and then California to reinforce points of entry to enhance CBP\u2019s ability to harden and secure the border\u2026 by providing robust military capabilities,\u00a0\u00bb the general said.
The massive deployment \u2013 about five times more troops than Pentagon officials indicated they initially planned to send last week \u2013 would bring to the border a military force roughly equal to the U. S. military deployment in Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State. The Pentagon has about 5,200 troops in Iraq and 2,000 in Syria, the amount that it has maintained in those countries through the vast majority of the ISIS fight launched in 2014.
Department of Homeland Security officials requested the new deployment of military forces, specifically citing the loosely organized group of some 3,500 Central American migrants now walking by foot in southern Mexico toward the United States. The group made up largely of women and children who have said they seek refugee status remain some 1,000 miles from the U. S. border, according to The Associated Press.
Nonetheless, Trump has repeatedly warned the group posed a national security threat to the United States, and he tweeted Monday it included \u201cMany Gang Members and some very bad people.\u201d
The \u201cMilitary is waiting for you!\u201d the president also tweeted.
CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan warned Monday that other similar caravans were being organized in Central America.
\u201cWe are preparing for the contingency of a large group of arriving persons intending to enter the United States in the next several weeks,\u201d McAleenan told reporters Monday afternoon in a briefing alongside O’Shaughnessy. \u201cWe will not allow a large group to enter the United States in an unsafe and unlawful manner.\u201d
The new deployment will consist largely of engineering, aviation, medical and planning specialists, O\u2019Shaugnessy said. However, it will also include an armed contingent of military police officers, including soldiers of the 89th Military Police Brigade from Fort Hood in Texas.
Despite carrying weapons, the MP forces would not be authorized to conduct law enforcement operations, an activity that would be barred under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act. That law bans the use of American military personnel for civilian law enforcement efforts on U. S. soil, outside military installations.
Earlier Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Trump administration was \u201clooking at a number of different options\u201d when she was asked if the president was considering suspending that act.
O’Shaughnessy seemed to put to rest any speculation that military troops would conduct unprecedented operations at the southern border under the impending deployment.
\u201cEverything we are doing is in line with and in adherence to Posse Comitatus,\u201d the general said.
Like the National Guard members who have been supporting CBP efforts at the border since April, the 5,200 deploying troops are not expected to interact with migrants. Instead, their mission will be largely to support and enable CBP agents to conduct their law enforcement duties.
Among soldiers deploying will be Army Corps of Engineers personnel and three battalions of Army combat engineers who will focus on such operation as building temporary barriers along the border and constructing shelters to house a potential influx of CBP agents, O’Shaughnessy said.
It will also include an influx of military aviation units who will be tasked with ferrying CBP agents along the border with helicopter and airplanes, he said.
McAleenan said the influx of military personnel was necessary to deter migrants from attempting to enter the United States illegally. However, some lawmakers dismissed the new deployment as a political stunt by the White House just a week before the Nov. 6 midterm elections.
Washington state Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat for the House Armed Services Committee, said Trump\u2019s announcement last week that he would use the military along the southern border was \u201cfundamentally wrong\u201d and a \u201cpolitical act.\u201d
\u201cWe should not be militarizing the border, and President Trump has offered no clear idea of what our forces are going to do there,\u201d Smith said Thursday. \u201cWe have seen no evidence that it was helpful or effective when he sent the National Guard to the border in April.\u201d
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who has been a vocal opponent of Trump\u2019s immigration policies, voiced his objection Monday to deploying more than 5,000 troops.
\u201cThe migrant caravan is full of women and children fleeing violence, poverty, and government repression,\u201d Markey tweeted Monday. \u201cSending thousands of troops to turn them away as if they are foreign invaders reflects the profound paranoia, fear, and hate fueling this administration\u2019s immigration policies.\u201d
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Friday that the move was consistent with actions taken by past presidents.
\u00ab\u00a0A fundamental responsibility of any country\u2019s government is to control who and what comes across its border. Allowing thousands of people to cross America\u2019s southern borders in contravention of our laws is not a sustainable solution to the difficult conditions driving people out of their homes and countries in Central America,\u201d Thornberry said in a statement. \u201cMexico should secure its own territory and turn this caravan around. At the same time, we must take appropriate steps, as [former] Presidents Obama and Bush did, to carry out the essential duties of a national government.\u201d
dickstein.corey@stripes.com Twitter: @CDicksteinDC
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