U.S. Marines with 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, load concertina wire onto a 7-ton truck at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif., Jan. 22, 2025, in preparation to deploy to the southern border. U.S. Northern Command is working together with the Department of Homeland Security with the emplacement of temporary physical barriers to add additional security that will curtail illegal border crossings. (Lance Cpl. Diego Berumen/Marine Corps)
U.S. officials are preparing to send thousands of additional troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, including, potentially, soldiers equipped with 20-ton Stryker combat vehicles, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the planning.
The Pentagon is rushing to cobble together options for an operation that President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency. These additional service members and capabilities, if all approved, would vastly expand the military’s footprint from Texas to California, where roughly 2,500 troops are positioned to assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the detection and apprehension of migrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.
One military official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive and evolving situation, said that some units have received notifications warning that they may be needed to deploy depending on the Trump administration’s desires. These efforts would supplement the Pentagon’s decision this week to send 1,500 service members to the border to augment the existing force that dates to the Biden administration.
Trump has portrayed the flow of people and illegal drugs across America’s southern frontier as an invasion that must be met with military might. He has long shown an appetite to employ U.S. troops domestically for demonstrations of force, whether to deter migration or to crack down on civil protests.
The effort underway now could include well over 10,000 soldiers and Marines, defense officials said. The Army is considering deploying the headquarters of the 10th Mountain Division, which is commanded by a two-star general, officials said. The infantry unit is based at Fort Drum in northern New York - not far from the Canadian border - and is available if needed, officials said.
Discussions also have included sending a brigade of infantry soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division in North Carolina and a mechanized unit with Stryker combat vehicles from the 4th Infantry Division in Colorado. Each brigade has more than 3,000 soldiers, but it’s not clear whether all of them would deploy.
The brigade within the 82nd Airborne Division that could be sent to the border is known as the Immediate Response Force. Such units are effectively always on alert and ready to deploy anywhere within a day - typically for major crises overseas. Recent assignments have included Eastern Europe, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and Afghanistan, following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in 2021. If the Immediate Response Force is sent to the Mexican border, the move would probably be temporary, and eventually another brigade would replace it, two officials said.
Within the Marine Corps, discussions so far have included sending up to 2,500 troops from across the service, said one official who cautioned that more troops - or fewer - could be dispatched depending on what the administration decides. It was not immediately clear what type of units are under consideration beyond a cluster of engineers tapped earlier this week who are trained to build barriers.
Strykers are armored, possess powerful optics and sensors, and are topped with removable machine guns. They were used heavily during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and more recently were sent by the Biden administration to the Ukrainian government to assist in fighting off Russian forces. Ukrainian troops employed the eight-wheeled behemoths to conduct a stunning raid into Russia over the summer. The sensors and optics could be helpful in detecting border crossings, and the vehicles will provide troops involved with quick transportation, officials said.
One official familiar with discussions underway at the Pentagon said one of the plans under consideration includes a visible road march of Stryker vehicles bound for the Mexican border - a dramatic spectacle, should it occur.
This official noted that other courses of action have been discussed, and it’s unclear whether any Strykers will be deployed at all. Trump’s affinity for military symbolism runs deep. During his first term in office, he ordered Abrams battle tanks to Washington for an Independence Day celebration. The plan raised concerns that the massive vehicles would destroy the city’s streets, and ultimately the tanks were left on railcars on the outskirts of the capital while smaller Bradley infantry fighting vehicles were brought in to flank the president as he delivered remarks at the Lincoln Memorial.
