Thread: First US troops arrive at southern border ahead of immigrant surge

First US troops arrive at southern border ahead of immigrant surge

by Mike Brest, Defense Reporter
May 10, 2023 12:05 PM

The first 550 U.S. active-duty troops have arrived at the southern border, where they were deployed to help manage an expected immigrant surge later this week.

Last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin approved a plan that would send an additional 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in preparation for an influx of immigrants when Title 42 expires on Thursday.

Title 42 is a rule that was put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic that allowed U.S. immigration officials to expel immigrants accused of crossing the border illegally more quickly.

The troops arriving at the border will start in El Paso, according to a Wednesday State Department fact sheet, while details for the remaining 1,000 will be announced at a later date. The deployments will include Army, Marine Corps, and limited Air Force personnel.

The service members will not be responsible for the apprehension of immigrants or law enforcement matters.

Instead, they will be "providing additional ground detection monitoring capability, warehouse support, [and] data entry," Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder told reporters on Tuesday. "They are not there in any way to be interacting with migrants."

Service members from the 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Combat Logistics Battalion 2, 2nd Marine Division, Camp Lejeune; and 93rd Military Police Battalion, 89th Military Police Brigade, Fort Bliss, Texas, are among those heading to the border.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned on Wednesday that border officials are "already seeing high numbers of encounters in certain sectors," which he said is placing "an incredible strain on our personnel, our facilities, and our communities, with whom we partner closely."

In order to process the surge, the State Department plans to open roughly 100 regional processing centers at specific locations and will, in the near future, launch an online platform so people can make appointments for those centers.

Active-duty military personnel are limited in what they can do on the border due to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which bars them from enforcing domestic laws unless explicitly authorized by the U.S. Congress.

National Guard soldiers, 2,500 of whom are at the border themselves, were exempt from that law, but because they were deployed under Title 10 active-duty orders, they were barred from enforcing federal law, including immigration laws.

The Pentagon has supported the Department of Homeland Security on the southern border for 18 of the last 22 years, and every year since 2006.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...-migrant-surge

We do not need a Welcome Wagon!

We need to expel them all.