A soldier assigned to 977th Military Police Company monitors the southern border near Eagle Pass, Texas, March 8, 2025. 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. (Walker Pino/U.S. Army)
AUSTIN, Texas — Another 600 Army and Air Force troops were announced Tuesday for deployments to the U.S. border with Mexico as President Donald Trump touted a dramatic decrease in migrants arrested for unauthorized entry into the country.
The latest deployment announcement included about 40 intelligence analysts from Air Force active-duty and Reserve units and about 590 engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers and the 18th Airborne Corps, according to U.S. Northern Command. A timeline for these troops to deploy has not been determined.
This will bring the number of service members assigned to the federal border security mission to about 9,600.
The deployments are part of a southwest border mission to assist the Department of Homeland Security that began in 2018 during Trump’s first term in office and continued under former President Joe Biden. When Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20, about 2,500 National Guard troops remained along the border.
Trump signed an executive order on his first day back to declare an emergency at the border and order additional active-duty service members be deployed to “seal the border.”
Marines with the 1st Combat Engineer Battalion of the 1st Marine Division, work on concertina wire barriers along the southern border near San Ysidro, Calif., March 2, 2025. 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. (Pfc. Dominic Atlas/U.S. Army)
People crossing between legal ports of entry peaked in December 2023, with federal agents recording nearly 302,000 migrants, according to Customs and Border Protection. Numbers have declined since then with the agency reporting more than 61,000 migrant crossings in January, the most recent official data available.
CBP officials haven’t formally reported February data, but Trump said only 8,326 migrants were arrested last month.
Troops working with border agents do not typically interact directly with migrants but instead work in support roles such as detection and monitoring, data entry, training, transportation, vehicle maintenance, warehousing and logistical support. This includes helicopter support for aerial reconnaissance to help CBP personnel on the ground.
The intel analysts will support the Joint Intelligence Task Force — Southern Border, which is part of a headquarters led by the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, N.Y. The engineers will work on a yet-to-be-determined mission, according to NORTHCOM.
The engineer units deploying under the 18th Airborne Corps are the 20th Engineer Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C., 19th Engineer Battalion and 15th Engineer Company from Fort Knox, Ky., and the 687th Engineer Company from Fort Johnson, La.
