(The Hill) — The Pentagon is sending up to 5,050 additional troops to the U.S.-Mexico border even as unlawful border crossings have sharply fallen in recent weeks.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a Stryker brigade combat team (SBCT) and a general support aviation battalion to “bolster military support in securing the U.S. – Mexico border,” Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell said in a statement Saturday.
Each SBCT consists of approximately 4,400 soldiers, while the aviation battalion has roughly 650 troops.
The forces will arrive along the nearly 2,000-mile border in the coming weeks, the official added. They did not say where the troops would be sent specifically.
This deployment comes after President Donald Trump, immediately upon entering office in January, declared a national emergency at the southern border and signed a number of executive orders intended to crack down on illegal crossings. As part of the effort, he has turned to the military to bolster security in the region, fly migrants out of the United States and house them at bases.
Trump had already ordered 1,600 Marines to the border in January, joining 2,500 service members already there prior to the new Trump administration.
The newest deployment could swell the number of boots on the ground at the border to just under 10,000.
The recent deployment comes as illegal crossings at the southern border are down 94 percent from the same period last year, Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks told CBS News last week.
And Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week revealed that Customs and Border Protection had apprehended only 200 people at the southern border on Feb. 22, the lowest single-day number in more than 15 years.
Such figures seem to be at odds with messaging from the Trump administration, with officials insisting the situation at the southern border is an “invasion.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, in an immigration policy memo issued when she took office early last month, wrote that unlawful border crossings and illegal migration into the United States “have reached record levels, resulting in a substantial and unacceptable threat to our national security and public safety.”
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