Members of the Texas National Guard on patrol in May 2022, in Eagle Pass, Texas. The Pentagon will deploy active-duty troops to the U.S. border with Mexico, a defense official said Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025. (Rose L. Thayer/Stars and Stripes)
The Pentagon will soon deploy up to 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S. border with Mexico, following executive orders that President Donald Trump signed Monday to use the military to seal the border and begin extending a wall between the two countries.
Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses was expected to sign the deployment orders Wednesday and an official statement on the mission would follow, a defense official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed.
Information on which troops or units will deploy and what they will do was not immediately available.
Trump on Monday ordered the Pentagon to deploy as many troops as needed to the border. He also ordered the military to begin work on a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and come up with a security plan to “seal the border and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security” of the United States.
Trump called on the Pentagon to assign the mission within 10 days to U.S. Northern Command, which is the combatant command that has typically managed military troops working at the southwest border.
The active-duty troops will join about 2,500 National Guard members now at the border, according to the Pentagon. Those troops work a support mission that includes detection and monitoring, data entry, training, transportation, vehicle maintenance, warehousing and logistical support. This includes helicopters for aerial reconnaissance in support of Customs and Border Protection personnel on the ground.
That mission began in April 2018 during Trump’s first term as president and remained in place during former President Joe Biden’s four years in office.
Trump did deploy active-duty troops to the border for several months in late 2018 after a large group of migrants arrived at one time. Biden briefly returned active-duty forces to the mission in May 2023 to prepare for changes to border-security policies that were in place following the coronavirus pandemic.
Matthew Adams contributed to this report.
