Washington: The Pentagon is sending about 3,000 more active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border as President Donald Trump seeks to clamp down on illegal immigration and fulfil a central promise of his campaign, US officials said Saturday.
His defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has ordered elements of a Stryker brigade combat team and a general support aviation battalion for the mission, the Pentagon announced. The forces will arrive along the nearly 2,000-mile border in the coming weeks.
The Defence Department’s statement did not specify the size of the deployment, but it was put at about 3,000 by the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Strykers are medium-armoured wheeled personnel carriers.
Around 9,200 US troops are stationed at the southern border, including federal and National Guard forces. The Pentagon says new deployments aim to bolster security and territorial integrity. Trump seeks to expand the military’s role in deterring migration, a practice ongoing since the 1990s to combat
trafficking and crime.