The 5,800 active duty troops the president dispatched to the border to confront the immigrant caravan are expected home by Christmas, according to the Pentagon.
Senior officials announced the schedule even as members of the caravan continued to pile up in Tijuana, Mexico, undercutting the ability of the administration to proclaim a ‘mission accomplished.’
‘The bottom line is that our numbers will be commensurate with the capabilities that … [Customs and Border Protection) is requesting,’ said Army Col. Rob Manning, Stars and Stripes reported.
Soldiers from the Kentucky-based 19th Engineer Battalion work in a public park in Laredo, Texas, where they are installing barbed and concertina-wire on November 17, 2018. The Pentagon is indicating that troops sent to the border will be home by Christmas, barring new orders
The troops, who have been ‘hardening’ the border and laying down concertina wire, are expected to remain in place through Thanksgiving.
The Pentagon sent the troops in the heat of the final days of the election, as President Donald Trump inveighed against an ‘invasion’ by an immigrant caravan that was then about 900 miles away in Mexico.
The first wave of troops began laying down fencing and other materials in photo-ready actions on orders that originally ran through Dec. 15.
Soldiers are beginning to install concertina wire and fencing along a stretch of the Rio Grande river in southwest Texas as Donald Trump prepares for the migrant ‘invasion’ from Central America
ROLLING THUNDER: Migrants receive donated clothing at a temporaty shelter near the U.S.-Mexico border on November 19, 2018 in Tijuana, Mexico. Parts of the migrant caravan have been arriving to Tijuana after traveling more than a month through Central America and Mexico to reach the U.S. border
‘Our end date right now is 15 December, and I’ve got no indications from anybody that we’ll go beyond that,’ Army Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan told Politico.
The deployment had been known as operation Faithful Patriot, but the military withdrew the name following some of the initial charges of political interference in the run-up to the elections, where Trump cast Democrats as favoring ‘open borders’ and warned of the dangers posed by the caravan.
Soldiers (pictured) unloading a truck full of barbed and concertina-wire work to be deployed in a public park in Laredo, Texas
Army Col. Richard Ball, 89th Military Police Brigade and Task Force Griffin commander, walks with James N. Mattis (R), Secretary of Defense, at Base Camp Donna, Texas, on November 14, 2018. – Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on November 14, 2018, that the military operation to harden the US-Mexico frontier was clearly necessary
The Pentagon deployed the troops on orders from President Trump, who warned during the campaign of an ‘invasion’ by the caravan of Central American migrants
According to the report, the Pentagon nixed the idea of an armed border force to backup the Border Patrol. The military is wary of running afoul of the Posse Comitatus law that prohibits using they army for law enforcement activity.
‘That is a law enforcement task, and the secretary of defense does not have the authority to approve that inside the homeland,’ said Buchanan.
Trump continued to talk up the deployment on Twitter Monday, sending out a photo of row-upon row of razor wire.
‘The Fake News is showing old footage of people climbing over our Ocean Area Fence. This is what it really looks like – no climbers anymore under our Administration!’ Trump wrote.
The news of the timetable came on a day when an academic and two retired Army colonels, Gordon Adams, Lawrence B. Wilkerson, and Isaiah Wilson III, penned a scathing op-ed calling the deployment a ‘stunt’ that was a ‘political misuse’ of the military.
‘The president used America’s military forces not against any real threat but as toy soldiers, with the intent of manipulating a domestic midterm election outcome, a unprecedented use of the military by a sitting president,’ they wrote in the New York Times.
The U.S. closed the border at two pedestrian crossings at San Ysidro, California, Monday for hours for installation of new barriers following rumors caravan members may be planning to rush across.