On Monday during a visit to the Mexican border, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the president’s goal was “100% operational control of the southern border” and he vowed to use thousands of U.S. active-duty troops to help stem migrant crossings, The New York Times reports. Hegseth and the nation’s border czar, Thomas Homan, flew above El Paso in Black Hawk helicopters on Monday and then drove to a remote desert hilltop where soldiers, Border Patrol agents and reporters gathered for a news conference. Hegseth said that troops along the border are important because they “relieve Border Patrol to have the opportunity to actually do the interdiction.” He added: “Under the Biden administration, the Border Patrol was too busy babysitting migrants who were being processed to enter the country. Now, because crossing the border is illegal and will get you deported, less people are crossing, more assets are calling out the people crossing the border.”
About 1,600 Marines and Army soldiers have been rushed to the U.S. border in California and Texas in the past two weeks to help build barriers and help law enforcement authorities, joining 2,500 Army forces already there. On Monday, Pentagon officials said that about 500 additional soldiers from the headquarters of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., were deploying to Texas to oversee the border operations. Trump has issued an executive order that gives the military an explicit role in immigration enforcement. It also directed the Defense Department to come up with a plan “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion.”
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