The Pentagon will mobilize 1500 active-duty U.S. troops to the Southern border as part of his pledge to control illegal immigration, PBS reported. This is the first step in carrying out an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office.
Not long after being sworn in on Monday, Trump made good on one of his campaign promises. Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses got to work Wednesday, signing an order to deploy service members.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the news to reporters Wednesday in a video shared by OANN's Daniel Baldwin. "President Trump signed an executive order - 1500 additional troops to United States southern border. This comes off of his day-one action…to direct the Department of Defense to make homeland security a core mission of the agency," she said.
White House Press Secretary @karolineleavitt confirms that 1500 U.S. troops will be dispatched to the Southern border.
This comes after President Trump signed an EO directing the military to prioritize protecting the sovereignty of the southern border. pic.twitter.com/pvgI84gpjn
— Daniel Baldwin (@baldwin_daniel_) January 22, 2025
During Trump's inaugural address, he promised to quit playing games like his predecessor and fix the illegal immigration problem. "I will declare a national emergency at our Southern border," Trump said Monday.
"All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came," he added. Nearly 36 hours later, Trump signed the executive order for troops to help with "detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services."
This would add to the 2,500 U.S. National Guard and Reserve troops already there. This is not the first time such action has been taken to deal with an influx of illegal immigrants.
Active-duty troops were sent to the border during Trump's first term as well as under President Joe Biden. They were primarily utilized for jobs like constructing barriers, transporting border patrol agents, and other logistics.
That may be different this time if Trump's incoming Homeland Security chief and incoming Secretary of Defense agree to invoke the Insurrection Act. This 1807 law is necessary to counteract a prohibition of active-duty military personnel performing civilian law enforcement functions within the U.S.
Trump has demonstrated that he is serious about fixing the problem of illegal immigration. Besides sending troops, the newly-elected president mobilized Immigration and Customs Enforcement to conduct raids, Fox News reported.
In just the first days of Trump's second term, ICE rounded up 460 illegal immigrants. Some of those picked up had criminal records for everything from drug and weapons crimes to sexual assault and other acts of violence.
The agency is focusing on criminals illegally in the U.S. rather than the garden variety border crosser. "Right out of the gate it’s public safety threats, those who are in the country illegally that have been convicted, arrested for serious crime," Border Czar Tom Homan said Tuesday.
"But let me be clear. There's not only public safety threats that will be arrested, because in sanctuary cities, we're not allowed to get that public safety threat in the jail, which means we got to go to the neighborhood and find him," he added.
