The United States military is preparing to send about 1,500 additional troops to the border with Mexico, U.S. officials said Wednesday, just two days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on immigration.
The troops will join the roughly 2,200 active-duty troops and thousands of National Guard troops already at the border.
During his first term, Republican Trump ordered 5,200 troops to help secure the border with Mexico. Former Democratic President Joe Biden also sent active-duty troops to the border.
An official said on condition of anonymity that this is likely the first wave of troops to be sent to the border and that the number could increase.
The official added that US military aircraft could also be used to deport immigrants, but this has not yet been approved.
On his first day in office, Trump declared illegal immigration a national emergency, tasking the U.S. military with helping with border security, issuing a sweeping asylum ban and taking steps to restrict citizenship to children born on U.S. soil.
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His Jan. 20 order directed the Pentagon to deploy as many troops as necessary to gain “complete operational control of the southern border of the United States.”
“Within 90 days, the heads of the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security will need to recommend whether additional actions, including invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, may be necessary,” he said.
The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows the U.S. president to mobilize the military to suppress domestic insurrections and has been used in the past to quell civil unrest.
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Trump won back the White House on promises to step up border security and deport record numbers of migrants. He criticized Biden for high levels of illegal immigration, even though the number of migrants caught crossing illegally had already begun to drop sharply after Biden tightened his policies last year and Mexico stepped up enforcement.
The Coast Guard, which is in charge of maritime security and law enforcement, said Tuesday that it would “immediately deploy” forces and ships to several areas, including the southeast border near Florida, to “deter and prevent a maritime migration into mass of Haiti and/or Cuba”.
Another important area, according to the agency, is the maritime border between Texas and Mexico in the “Gulf of America” — Trump wants to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
