The United States has activated 1,500 soldiers to the U.S.-Mexico border, officials announced Wednesday.
It’s still not clear what mission the troops will undergo. Pentagon officials haven’t said which units it activated and the number of soldiers deployed could change. The role could also change.
Traditionally, soldiers sent to the border in previous operations, including during President Donald Trump’s first term, were there in roles supporting Homeland Security agents along the border. They also erected dozens of miles of razor wire along the border wall in urban areas like Nogales.
Some 2,500 National Guard and Reserve forces are already deployed in areas along the border.
Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses was expected to sign the deployment orders on Wednesday, but it wasn't yet clear which troops will go, and the total could fluctuate. It remains to be seen if they will end up doing law enforcement, which would put American troops in a dramatically different role for the first time in decades.
“This is something President Trump campaigned on," said Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary. “The American people have been waiting for such a time as this -- for our Department of Defense to actually implement homeland security seriously. This is a No. 1 priority for the American people.”
The troops are expected to be used to support Border Patrol agents, with logistics, transportation and construction of barriers, according to U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because details have not yet been released. Troops have done similar duties in the past, when both Trump and former President Joe Biden sent active duty troops to the border.
Troops are prohibited by law from doing law enforcement duties under the Posse Comitatus Act, but that may change. Trump has directed through executive order that the incoming secretary of defense and incoming homeland security chief report back within 90 days if they think an 1807 law called the Insurrection Act should be invoked. That would allow those troops to be used in civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil.
The last time the act was invoked was in 1992 during rioting in Los Angeles in protest of the acquittal of four police officers charged with beating Rodney King.
The widely expected deployment, coming in Trump’s first week in office, was an early step in his long-touted plan to expand the use of the military along the border. In one of his first orders on Monday, Trump directed the defense secretary to come up with a plan to “seal the borders” and repel “unlawful mass migration.”
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It's the final ruling in a case that began last year, when the Trump administration announced plans to build a 30-foot steel bollard wall along some 27-miles of San Rafael Valley and waived a host of laws to speed-up construction.
