The Biden administration is planning to temporarily deploy 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of an expected surge in migrants.
The announcement comes as Title 42, a policy that allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants at the border and blocks them from seeking asylum, is set to expire May 11.
A U.S. official told The Hill the troops would be deployed for 90 days to assist with work including ground-based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support, but they would not be doing law enforcement work.
The troops are meant to station at the border until U.S. Customs and Border Protection can more adequately address its needs through contracted support, according to the official.
DHS officials have predicted that attempts to cross the border could climb following the end of the policy, which was first implemented under the Trump administration.
In March, U.S. officials encountered more than 191,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border; administration officials have said they expect that number to go up significantly with the end of Title 42.
Last week, the agency announced that in response to the end of Title 42, it plans to carry out expedited deportations using Title 8 authorities and establish two regional centers in Guatemala and Colombia, where migrants can apply for asylum on other avenues to immigrate to the U.S.
Biden administration officials say the stiffer penalties of Title 8 removals — which carry a five-year bar on entering the United States — as well as better avenues to seek legal pathways to enter the U.S., will relieve pressure at the border.
It is not unheard of for presidents to send troops to the border.
“DOD personnel have been supporting CBP at the border for almost two decades now, so this is a common practice, if you will,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.
“What’s different is that these are active-duty troops. Not National Guard,” said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America. “Trump sent active-duty troops to the border during the caravans in 2018, but Biden took them away.”
Former President Donald Trump deployed 5,000 troops to the border ahead of the 2018 midterms amid concerns about an approaching “caravan” of migrants, a move Democrats criticized at the time as political posturing. Trump maintained a troop presence at the border through the remainder of his presidency.
Trump’s deployment, originally known as Operation Faithful Patriot, was continued under Biden, albeit with smaller numbers.
In October, Biden ordered more troops to the border under that operation, one of 17 deployments over the previous two decades.
In 2010, the Obama administration also deployed troops to assist border operations, as did the Bush administration in 2006.
Much of the criticism leveled against those operations was around their cost — the two operations cost a combined $1.3 billion.
Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), who has on occasion butted heads with the administration and centrist Democrats on immigration, condemned the latest deployment.
“We condemned Trump for doing the same thing. Biden shouldn’t follow his lead and move forward with these plans,” García wrote on Twitter.
“Military deployment isn’t a replacement for meaningful immigration reform.”
Sen. Bob Menéndez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also panned the Biden administration’s decision.
“The Biden Administration’s militarization of the border is unacceptable. There is already a humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere, and deploying military personnel only signals that migrants are a threat that require our nation’s troops to contain. Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Menéndez in a statement.
Menéndez expanded on his criticism to question the administration’s overall conduct on the issue.
“The Administration has had over two years to plan for the eventual end of this Trump-era policy in a way that does not compromise our values as a country. I have offered them a strategic and comprehensive plan, which they have largely ignored. Trying to score political points or intimidate migrants by sending the military to the border caters to the Republican Party’s xenophobic attacks on our asylum system.”
Rafael Bernal and Rebecca Beitsch contributed.
Updated at 5:32 p.m.