By Lolita C. Baldor
Washington (AP) – The Pentagon is preparing orders for the deployment of at least 1,000 troops of additional active duty to reinforce the repression of President Donald Trump About immigrationAmerican officials said Friday.
They said that approximately 500 more soldiers, largely a unit of the headquarters of the tenth mountain division in Fort Drum in New York, will be sent to the southwest border. And around 500 Marines will go to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some of the migrants arrested will be held.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no ads have been made, they said there have been ongoing discussions about implementations and numbers could increase if additional details are resolved.
The Pentagon has been fighting to launch Trump’s Executive orders Signed shortly after taking office on January 20. The first group of 1,600 active service troops deployed on the border last week.
The deployments reflect Trump’s determination to expand the role of the military in their campaign to close the border and send to migrants stopped back to their countries of origin.
It is expected that the troops that go to the border help establish the barriers of concert wire and provide the necessary transport, intelligence and other support for the border patrol. The troops that go to Guantanamo could help prepare the installation for an influx of migrants and do other support tasks.
Speaking about “Fox and Friends” on Friday morning, Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, said he believes that the United States can obtain “thousands of people in tents, insured in places in the Bay of Guantanamo.”
But he also said that there is the possibility that hardened criminals or violent gang members can also be housed there. As a result, he said that the Department of Defense is preparing detention facilities in Guantanamo “that are basically Supermax prisons” to be used to maintain them temporarily.
The officials have been saying all the week that there is likely that there are additional troops displays to help ensure the southern border, potentially implemented rapidly in the next few days. The eventual total deployed could be up to 10,000.
Before Trump returned to the White House, there were already around 2,500 guard forces and constantly deployed reservations on the border. The authorities indicated that, given the length of the border of almost 2,000 miles with Mexico, it will take additional strength to help put large rolls of concert wire barriers and provide support to the border patrol.
The approximately 1,100 Army soldiers and 500 Marines ordered to deploy on the border last week have reached El Paso, Texas and San Diego, and many have already begun to work.
Separately, the US army is providing military airplanes for deportation flights of the National Security Department for more than 5,000 migrants arrested. At least some of them are expected to go to the detention center at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay.
Trump said Wednesday that his administration planned to send the “worst criminal foreigners” to Guantanamo. He ordered the Pentagon to prepare to contain up to 30,000 migrants. He said that some of the migrants cannot be trusted to stay in their countries of origin once they send them back.
“Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust countries to keep them because we don’t want them to return, so we will send them to Guantanamo,” Trump said.
This is not the first time that migrants would take place in Guantanamo. The US authorities have arrested migrants intercepted in the sea in an installation known as migrant operations center, including people from Haiti and Cuba.
Originally published:
