President Joe Biden’s administration plans to send roughly 1,500 troops to the U.S. border with Mexico ahead of the end of Title 42, a pandemic-era immigration restriction the administration has long relied on to slow the influx of asylum-seekers crossing into the country, administration officials said Tuesday.
The administration is tasking the troops primarily with administrative and logistical work, freeing up Customs and Border Protection agents to focus on fieldwork as Title 42 comes to an end on May 11. The troops will not engage in law enforcement work and are set to stay at the border for at least 90 days.
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“This support will free up DHS law enforcement personnel to perform their critical law enforcement missions,” the Department of Homeland Security, which requested aid from the Pentagon, said in a statement.
The ongoing flow of asylum-seekers crossing the border, and how to handle it, has proved to be one of the thorniest political problems facing Biden ― and one the GOP has been eager to highlight. Biden came into office promising a softer hand in addressing immigrants compared to former President Donald Trump’s use of family separation and other punitive measures to deter border-crossers.
Biden has relied on Title 42, which gave the government the power to deny asylum claims for health reasons during the COVID-19 pandemic, to limit immigrant entry. Troops are set to arrive as soon as May 10, one day before the end of Title 42, the Pentagon told reporters on Tuesday.
The White House downplayed the move as standard operating procedure to deal with an increased number of migrants, and DHS noted troops have supported the department’s work on the border every year since 2006.
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“DOD personnel have been supporting CBP at the border for almost two decades now, so this is a common practice,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a daily press briefing, referring to the Department of Defense and Customs and Border Protection by their acronyms.
Beyond calling down additional troops — there are already roughly 2,700 National Guard members at the border — the administration is also rolling out a series of steps to manage the demand. They are opening centers throughout Latin America, starting with Guatemala and Columbia, where people fleeing violence and poverty can apply for asylum without traveling to the border.
The administration has also instituted new policies to quickly screen and deport asylum-seekers at the border, and to punish those who travel illegally through Mexico to reach the border. Those new policies have drawn protest from immigrant rights groups, who argue they are similar to a Trump proposal struck down by the courts.
For now, however, Biden’s Republican critics think bringing down troops will do little to ease the border chaos.
“They can’t enforce immigration laws under posse comitatus, so they may help around the margins, but this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said, referring to the law barring the military from playing a role in civilian law enforcement.
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Democrats had a muted response to the administration’s decision to send active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“My understanding is their role is only for logistical support. I certainly hope it stays that way, and I’ve communicated that to them,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) told HuffPost.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies, added: “I am against militarizing the border.”
Immigrant rights advocates condemned the move. Jonathan Blazer, director of border strategies for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Biden was “sending troops to the border at the eleventh hour, for political optics.”
“People who have been forced to flee their homes and embark on arduous, dangerous journeys for the chance to seek legal protection in the U.S. should be met with compassion – not military troops,” Blazer said in a statement.
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Shortly before the 2018 midterm elections, Trump authorized sending roughly 800 troops to the border on a similar mission. At the time, Trump argued they were necessary to stop a caravan of thousands of migrants headed towards the border, even though the military could not play any role in preventing immigrants from crossing and the flow of immigrants was a mere fraction of what is today. Trump also suggested, without evidence, the caravan contained “MANY CRIMINALS.”
At the time, Vice President Kamala Harris, then a senator from California, suggested the deployment of troops was little more than a political stunt.
“This is all because there needed to be a demonstration for the TV cameras to serve a political agenda,” she told a local television station in California.
Igor Bobic contributed reporting.
