U.S. Northern Command announced on Monday that more than 600 soldiers and airmen will deploy to the southern border as part of the U.S. military’s ongoing operations to stem illegal immigration.
About 590 engineers serving under the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps will be part of the deployment, a NORTHCOM news release says. The soldiers will come from the following units:
- 20th Engineer Brigade from Fort Bragg, North Carolina
- 19th Engineer Battalion from Fort Knox, Kentucky
- 15th Engineer Company from Fort Knox, Kentucky
- 687th Engineer Company from Fort Johnson, Louisiana
Roughly 40 Air Force intelligence analysts, from both active-duty and the reserve component, will also support the Joint Intelligence Task Force – Southern Border.
Officials are still determining the timeline for these deployments. When the soldiers and airmen arrive, a total of about 9,600 service members will either be deployed or scheduled to deploy to the U.S.-Mexico border.
On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on the southern border, and he ordered the military to support the Department of Homeland Security on border security.
“As Commander in Chief, I have no more solemn duty than to protect the American people,” Trump wrote in an executive order.
Two days later, the Pentagon announced it was deploying 1,000 soldiers and 500 Marines to the southern border as the first tranche of troops headed to the region. Those forces have since grown to include about 2,400 from the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), 4th Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson, Colorado; and 500 soldiers from 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Stewart, Georgia.
Active duty troops with Joint Task Force North have been tasked with “supporting enhanced detection and monitoring efforts” along with repairing and replacing physical barriers along the southern border, a defense official told Task & Purpose for a previous story.
A one-star general with Air Force Special Operations Command, or AFSOC, has recently suggested that the Air Force’s newest plane, the OA-1K Skyraider II, could be used for missions over the U.S.-Mexico border. The single-engine turboprop aircraft is designed to conduct advanced armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions and carry out precision airstrikes.
“Providing scalable and precision effects is where the Skyraider II will come in,” Brig. Gen. Craig Prather, AFSOC’s director of strategic plans, said in a Feb. 27 news release. “The Skyraider II could take on missions from the southwest border to Africa and create dilemmas to those we are in competition with.”