The Pentagon is increasing its defense measures at the southern border, ordering nearly 3,000 soldiers to the area who will arrive in the coming weeks.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday ordered a Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which includes 20-ton armored Stryker combat vehicles, and a general support aviation battalion unit to deploy to the U.S.-Mexico border, a senior defense official said in a statement.
The defense official added that this deployment’s goal is to “reinforce and expand current border security operations to seal the border and protect the territorial integrity of the United States.”
Of the 3,000 troops, about 2,400 will deploy with the Stryker brigade and another 550 will go with the aviation unit, according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, the Stryker vehicles, which can carry up to 11 soldiers and have been used in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will most likely be sent to the border by rail and truck, the report added.
After the announcement, Hegseth posted on X that the Trump administration is “dead serious about 100% OPERATIONAL CONTROL of the southern border.”
The new deployment nearly doubles the Pentagon’s earlier surging of troops to the southern border at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term. That deployment included 1,000 Army personnel and 500 Marines, along with military airlifts to support deportation flights of illegal immigrants living in the United States.
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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) have touted the effectiveness of the new border security measures from the federal government.
Earlier this week, Noem announced that the number of apprehensions made at the southern border last Saturday dropped lower than the several hundred arrests made per day to just a couple of hundred people, saying this was the “lowest single apprehension day in over 15 years.” Abbott also said the new federal resources to the border have assisted state forces in shutting down illegal immigration along the Texas-Mexico part of the border, which was a hot spot during the Biden administration’s border crisis.