Pentagon Maintains Troop Deployment At Southern Border With Mexico Until the End of September
Jose Nino
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On August 31, 2023, the United States Defense Department announced that it plans on extending the deployment of roughly 400 active-duty American troops at the US southern border with Mexico until at least the end of September.
In August, the Pentagon withdrew 1,100 troops from the border. However, the Pentagon extended the deployment of the 400 soldiers that remained.
“On Aug. 24, 2023, the secretary of defense approved an extension of up to 400 personnel providing support to Customs and Border Protection on the southwest border through Sept. 30, 2023,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Devin Robinson said to NBC News on September 1.
Back in May, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin approved the deployment of 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border for 90 days to help border officials with a possible influx of illegal aliens at the border.
The Pentagon announced that the military units will “fill critical capability gaps, such as ground-based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support” but will not be directly involved in law enforcement activities.
The aim of deploying these troops was to help back up border officials confronting the implications of the end of Title 42, which enabled US authorities to rapidly kick out tens of thousands of migrants from the country under the guise of protecting Americans from the Wuhan virus.
According to data published by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on August 18, the US Border Patrol recorded 132,652 encounters between ports of entry across the southwest border in July, which was an increase from the 99,545 in June.
Per CBP data, the US Border Patrol encountered roughly 2,016 single adults on a daily basis in July alone, representing a 66% decrease from the 6,164 they encountered on a daily basis in the first 11 days of May.
“CBP’s message for anyone who is thinking of entering the United States without authorization or illegally along the southwest border is simple: don’t do it. When noncitizens cross the border unlawfully, they put their lives in peril,” it highlighted.
Troops should be deployed at the southern border with Mexico but such a move is likely too little too late. If anything, the quantity of troops should be dramatically increased at the southern border. Let’s take some of the thousands of troops stationed abroad and move them to the southern border instead.
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