Pentagon to Send an Added 3,000 Troops to the U.S.-Mexico Border

WASHINGTON — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that another round of active-duty troops will head to the U.S.-Mexico border in the coming weeks at the behest of President Donald Trump.

Despite encounters at the southern border being the lowest in recent years, an additional 3,000 troops will aid immigration officials, Hegseth said Saturday. Those military personnel will not partake in deportation operations, according to the U.S. Northern Command.

“We are dead serious about 100% OPERATIONAL CONTROL of the southern border,” Hegseth wrote in a social media post.

As Trump aims to carry out his campaign promise of enacting mass deportations, he’s directed the Department of Defense to become involved in immigration policy, such as the use of military planes to deport immigrants.

An executive order Trump signed on his first day of his second term declared a national emergency at the southern border, and Trump quickly sent 1,500 troops to the border. 

The latest surge of members from the Stryker Brigade Combat Team and a General Support Aviation Battalion will join the more than 9,200 troops in total now stationed at the border, with 4,200 stemming from federal deployments and 5,000 from state governors.

Stryker vehicles have been used in combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and are armored vehicles that can carry up to 11 soldiers.

“These forces will arrive in the coming weeks and their deployment underscores the Department’s unwavering dedication to working alongside the Department of Homeland Security to secure our southern border and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States under President Trump’s leadership,” Sean Parnell, Department of Defense chief spokesperson, said in a statement.

The Northern Command announced that Fort Carson, based in Colorado, is sending 2,400 soldiers from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. In addition, 500 soldiers will be sent from the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

The tasks those activity-duty troops will partake in at the southern border include administrative support, detection and monitoring, transportation support, engineering support and warehousing and logistics support, according to the Northern Command.

The 19th Public Affairs Detachment from Fort Riley in Kansas will also be deployed to the southern border to “provide public affairs support with visual information and media relations capabilities,” according to the Northern Command.

There has been a sharp dip in encounters at the southern border, according to the most recent Customs and Border Protection data from January.

In January of fiscal year 2025, there were about 65,000 encounters compared to 176,000 in January of fiscal year 2024, a reduction of more than half.

Last updated 2:46 p.m., Mar. 3, 2025

by Ariana Figueroa, Virginia Mercury

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