The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely (DDG 107) is moored at Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, Va., on March 15, 2025, prior to getting underway for a scheduled deployment to the U.S. Northern Command area of responsibility. U.S. Northern Command is working together with the Department of Homeland Security to augment U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the southern border with additional military forces. (Ryan Williams/U.S. Navy)
The Pentagon has deployed a Navy destroyer on an unusual mission to bolster security at the southern U.S. border, defense officials said, dispatching a warship involved last year in combat in the Middle East to waters typically patrolled by the U.S. Coast Guard.
The USS Gravely, a guided-missile destroyer, left from Naval Weapons Station Yorktown in Virginia on Saturday as part of the Defense Department’s response to President Donald Trump’s executive order calling for securing the southern border. It marks the latest example of the Trump administration using the U.S. military at home to fend off what the president has claimed is an “invasion” at the border.
Gen. Gregory Guillot, who oversees U.S. Northern Command, said in a statement that the Gravely will improve U.S. abilities “to protect the United States’ territorial integrity, sovereignty and security.” Defense officials added in the same statement that the deployment will contribute to “a coordinated and robust response to combating maritime related terrorism, weapons proliferation, transnational crime, piracy, environmental destruction, and illegal seaborne immigration.”
U.S. defense officials, including Pentagon spokesmen John Ullyot and Sean Parnell, did not respond to questions about whether the Gravely’s deployment is meant to address a possible shortfall in available Coast Guard vessels, or if it is intended to send a signal to drug cartels in the region. Trump has in the past voiced a desire to launch military strikes against the cartels.
Trump has also repeatedly said in recent weeks that he wants to “take back” the Panama Canal, the vital waterway that connects the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Ullyot said in a statement Sunday that the Pentagon has no announcements to make about a change in U.S. military presence in Panama, and that the Defense Department is “fully prepared to support the President’s national security priorities including those surrounding the Panama Canal.”
U.S. defense officials are working with Panama “on several exercises and events throughout the year,” including troop movements in the region that the administration assesses “will strengthen our excellent military partnership with Panama,” Ullyot said, without mentioning the Gravely. “The United States and Panama share a strong security partnership built on mutual respect and trust.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said repeatedly that he views border security as national security, sending thousands of active-duty troops to the southern border to bolster security operations that are led by the Department of Homeland Security.
“We have defended other places and other spaces,” Hegseth said in February during an initial trip to the border as defense secretary. “We will defend this line.”
The deployment of the Gravely in Northern Command’s region leaves open the possibility that it could conduct patrols in the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump renamed the Gulf of America on his first day in office. Doing so would allow the administration to draw attention to the name change and present a symbol of military strength there. The Panama Canal falls just outside Northcom’s borders, but military vessels frequently move between such boundaries.
U.S. defense officials, in their statement Saturday night, said that the destroyer will travel with a small group of Coast Guard members aboard, raising the possibility that the vessel could assist in the detention of migrants found at sea. Coast Guard members often carry out law enforcement missions, while U.S. military units are not permitted to do so in most cases because of the Posse Comitatus Act.
The Gravely, at more than 509 feet long, is larger than all vessels in the Coast Guard fleet and carries dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles.
In July, the destroyer completed a nine-month deployment that the Navy called “unprecedented.” The assignment was twice extended, as the Gravely escorted the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and shot down munitions launched by Houthi militants in Yemen aimed at commercial and military ships in the Red Sea.
