Pentagon to Expand Mission on US-Mexico Border, Allow Some Troops Direct Contact with Migrants by Corey Dickstein - Stars & Stripes
The Pentagon will expand the military’s mission along the southern border, sending nearly 300 additional active-duty troops there who will be authorized to have direct contact with migrants entering the United States to provide them food and shuttle them between locations, defense officials said Friday.
Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan on Friday was expected to approve a request for assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to deploy the new troops in the coming days, said Charlie Summers, the Pentagon’s acting chief spokesman. The new troops will include some 160 drivers, about 100 support troops – mostly cooks – and about 20 lawyers.
The new deployment will bring the number of active-duty troops operating along the southern border in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to about 3,200. Another roughly 2,000 National Guard troops are also serving deployments along the border in a separate, but related, mission to support Customs and Border Protection agents.
Summers said the new missions that place troops in direct contact with migrants did not represent an official change to the Pentagon’s long-standing operating procedures, which barred its troops from contact with migrants, unless that contact was to deliver emergency medical aid...