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Pentagon sends 1500 active troops to Mexican border

Karoline Leavitt on border crackdown

Source: X/Iris Tao

The Pentagon has begun deploying 1500 ground troops to the US-Mexico border as President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal crossings was launched on Thursday (AEDT).

The dramatic move is in response to Trump declaring a “national emergency” on immigration and signing an executive order after his inauguration this week.

There are reports the Trump administration is considering deploying as many as 10,000 soldiers to the border and holding migrants at army bases.

Acting US defence secretary Robert Salesses said the first batch of troops would fly helicopters to assist Border Patrol agents and help in constructing barriers.

The Pentagon will also provide military aircraft for deportation flights for more than 5000 detained migrants.

Salesses said: “This is just the beginning.”

He said the defence department would be working with other federal agencies to address “the full range of threats” at America’s borders.

Defence officials said the department was prepared to provide many more troops if asked, including up to 2000 more marines.

Officials said there was no plan yet for the troops to do law enforcement, which would put them in a dramatically different role for the first time in decades. Any decision on this would be made by the White House, they said.

The active duty forces will join the roughly 2500 US National Guard and Reserve forces already on the US border with Mexico. Until this deployment, there were no active duty troops working along the roughly 3200-kilometre border.

About 200 troops started moving to the border earlier on Wednesday (US time), a senior military official said.

They and a defence official briefed media on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details on the deployment. The troops will include 500 marines from Camp Pendleton in California, while the remainder will be US Army.

The US forces being used for deportation flights are separate from the 1500 sent for the border mission. Those flights will involve four US Air Force aircraft based in San Diego an El Paso, along with crews and maintenance personnel.

Troops have done similar duties in support of Border Patrol agents in the past, when both Trump and former president Joe Biden sent active duty troops to the border.

The widely expected deployment, coming in Trump’s first week in office, was an early step in his long-touted plan to expand the use of the military along the border.

In one of his first orders on Monday, Trump directed the defence secretary to come up with a plan to “seal the borders” and repel “unlawful mass migration”.

“This is something President Trump campaigned on,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

“The American people have been waiting for such a time as this – for our Department of Defence to actually implement homeland security seriously. This is a No.1 priority for the American people.”

Trump said during his inaugural address on Monday that “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came”.

Military personnel have been sent to the US’s southern border almost continuously since the 1990s to help address migration. drug trafficking and transnational crime.

In executive orders signed on Monday, Trump suggested the military would help the Department of Homeland Security with “detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services”.

In his first term, Trump ordered active duty troops to the border in response to a caravan of migrants slowly making its way through Mexico toward the US in 2018.

-with AAP

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