The new United States government is taking swift action to bolster security along the 3,145-kilometer-long U.S.-Mexico border as President Donald Trump seeks to fulfill his campaign promise to halt illegal immigration and stop the entry of illicit drugs.
Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses announced Wednesday that he had approved the immediate deployment of 1,500 additional active-duty troops to the United States’ southwest border.
The deployment consists of 1,000 soldiers and 500 marines who had previously been on standby in Southern California to potentially help combat the Los Angeles County wildfires, according to a senior military official quoted by the U.S. Department of Defense news department.
Salesses said in a statement that the Department of Defense (DoD) would “begin augmenting its forces at the southwest border with an additional 1,500 ground personnel, as well as helicopters with associated crews, and intelligence analysts to support increased detection and monitoring efforts.”
He noted that the additional deployment represents a 60% increase in active-duty ground forces since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday.
Just hours after he took office, Trump signed one executive order declaring a “national emergency” at the United States-Mexico border and another entitled “Securing our borders.”
Salesses said that the U.S. president directed him to “take all appropriate action to support the activities of the Secretary of Homeland Security in obtaining complete operational control of the southern border of the United States.”
“… At my direction, DoD established a Task Force to oversee expedited implementation of the Executive Orders,” he said.
The Associated Press reported that U.S. troops are “prohibited by law from doing law enforcement duties under the Posse Comitatus Act, but that may change” if the Trump administration invokes an 1807 law called the Insurrection Act. Such a move — on which Trump has sought the opinion of senior officials — would allow troops on the border to be used in civilian law enforcement, AP said.
In addition to the troop deployment, Salesses said that he approved two other “immediate actions” that would commence on Wednesday.
He said that the DoD would provide military airlift to support Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deportation flights of “more than five thousand illegal aliens from the San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas sectors detained by Customs and Border Protection.”
The acting defense secretary also said that the DoD would “begin assisting in the construction of temporary and permanent physical barriers to add additional security to curtail illegal border crossings and illicit trafficking.”
“This is just the beginning,” Salesses said, adding that the DoD, “in short order,” would “develop and execute additional missions in cooperation with DHS, federal agencies, and state partners to address the full range of threats outlined by the President at our nation’s borders.”
“President Trump directed action from the Department of Defense on securing our nation’s borders and made clear he expects immediate results. That is exactly what our military is doing under his leadership,” he said.
Trump on Monday said that the U.S. military could even be used in Mexico to combat Mexican cartels.
“Stranger things have happened,” he told reporters as he signed executive orders in the Oval Office.
Trump has railed against both Mexico and Canada for allowing migrants and drugs into the United States. He said on Monday that his administration could impose a 25% tariff on Mexican and Canadian exports to the U.S. on Feb. 1 “because they’re allowing vast numbers of people … to come in and fentanyl to come in.”
During his first term as president, Trump threatened to impose a blanket 5% tariff on Mexican exports to pressure the Mexican government to do more to stem illegal immigration to the United States. The Mexican government averted the proposed tariff in June 2019 when it reached an agreement with the U.S. under which it deployed troops to ramp up enforcement against migrants.
Mexico News DailyÂ
