Trump Orders 1,500 Active-Duty Troops to Border Ahead of Pentagon Security Plan Deadline

The Pentagon is surging approximately 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern U.S. border under orders from President Donald Trump, a defense official said, as the commander in chief flexes his new authority and attempts to make good on a campaign promise to curb immigration into the country.

It was not immediately clear Wednesday what units and service branches would be tapped for the deployment, but the announcement comes amid the Trump administration's recent executive actions directing a comprehensive military border mission as well as designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.

In recent years, there has been a constant troop presence at the southern border with Mexico. Throughout both Trump's first term in office and former President Joe Biden's administration, active-duty service members were deployed there, along with National Guard troops sent by many Trump-loyal governors across the country.

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But the new deployment comes as Trump has promised a historic crackdown on border crossings and the massive deportation of undocumented immigrants, and some of the language in the president's recent executive orders perplexes defense and legal experts. 

There are two separate operations going on at the southern border that pre-date the current Trump administration: Joint Task Force North and Operation Lone Star.

The first is U.S. Northern Command's border mission that is based out of El Paso, Texas, and staffed by around 2,200 active-duty troops who are supporting U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The other is Operation Lone Star, a contingent of National Guard troops stationed at the border that is headed up by the Texas National Guard but supported by several other Republican governors. At its peak, Operation Lone Star included some 10,000 National Guardsmen, but the Texas Guard did not have the personnel to sustain those numbers, and they have since fallen to just several thousand.

Military.com has reported on the emotional toll that many Lone Star Guardsmen have experienced while deployed on the southern border mission by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. There have also been reported clusters of suicides and deaths for those who've been on the mission.

Trump's executive order the day he took office commanded the defense secretary to make plans in a little more than a week for U.S. Northern Command, which typically is in charge of missile and airspace security for North America, to oversee the mission.

"No later than 10 days from the effective date of this order, deliver to the president a revision to the Unified Command Plan that assigns United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) the mission to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities," Trump's order read.

Both former defense officials and legal experts questioned the language in Trump's executive order. 

Retired Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., who served as NORTHCOM commander between 2007 and 2010, told Military.com in an interview Wednesday that, after reading the order, it's unclear to him what role existing border agencies would have in the effort. 

"While it doesn't specifically say, it alludes to the fact that DoD would be the lead element in this effort but, but doesn't really specify what roles the other more traditional border security organizations -- ICE, Customs and Border Protection, ATF -- those folks who traditionally have had a role there," Renuart said. "It doesn't really specify who's the supporting or supported organization."

Renuart said it's common for NORTHCOM to be the overseeing and planning organization as certain National Guard assets are put on federal orders such as law enforcement to assist those traditional border agencies -- like the already existing Joint Task Force North -- and speculated it's possible for the command to comply with the order through those existing and well-established practices. 

But opening up certain military operations, not just support missions, at the border or in Mexico "poses a whole other set of issues with governments of other countries," Renuart said.

That vague language is concerning for legal experts such as Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the nonprofit Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program.

Goitein told Military.com in an interview that she "didn't blink an eye"at the development of 1,500 troops heading to the border, saying that's been a common practice for the military to assist Homeland Security or other border agencies. 

But the language of the NORTHCOM-focused executive order is very different. She said Trump's use of his authority as commander in chief and the use of the phrase "repelling forms of invasion" alludes to something larger than law enforcement duties for the military, even a formal defense operation.

"It can be very tough to parse orders that are badly written, because repel invasion is ordinarily not about law enforcement," Goitein said. "What this seems to be doing is not involving the military in either assisting with or conducting law enforcement, but rather anticipating a potential military campaign to be waged at the southern border against

migrants."

Goitein explained that conducting and planning military campaigns at the border is not something that NORTHCOM does, but added that Trump's executive order may push those norms. 

"The fact that it isn't a thing, and it is unprecedented and probably illegal, doesn't mean that Trump didn't just try to kind of order it, or at least prepare for it, or do an order sort of teeing it up," she said.

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