Members of the Texas National Guard on patrol in May 2022, in Eagle Pass, Texas. President Donald Trump pledged Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, to send more troops to the U.S. border with Mexico under an emergency declaration. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)
President Donald Trump pledged Monday to send more troops to the U.S. border with Mexico under an emergency declaration that he intends to sign soon after entering the White House for his second term in office.
“I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country,” Trump said during his inaugural address from the U.S. Capitol. “As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that nobody has ever seen before.”
The deployment will include the “armed forces, including the National Guard” to assist existing law enforcement, according to a news release from the incoming Trump administration.
The move to declare an emergency at the border echoes back to executive actions taken by Trump in his first term as president. He first deployed the National Guard to the southwest border in April 2018, then supplemented them with active-duty troops seven months later.
The use of troops was later criticized by the National Guard’s top officer as having “no military training value.”
Meanwhile, he diverted more than $10 billion from the Defense Department, including money flagged for military construction projects, to build a wall along the border.
When Joe Biden took office in 2021, he halted most border wall construction and rescinded the national emergency. However, Biden kept the National Guard working along the border and about 2,500 are now deployed there, according to the Pentagon.
