Biden to send 1,500 troops to Texas to help shore up border from feared migrant surge
Amid fears of a migrant surge across the Mexican border as a Trump-era pandemic border policy ends next week, the Biden administration has ordered 1,500 troops to Texas.
U.S. officials are expecting illegal crossings to grow past 10,000 per day when the pandemic-era border policy known as Title 42 ends May 11.
Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, then President Donald J. Trump used an interpretation of a rarely used clause in the 1944 Public Health Service Act to speed up the return of migrants crossing the U.S. border with Mexico. Since then federal authorities have used the measures to carry out more than 2.6 million expulsions.
Military personnel will do data entry, warehouse support and other administrative tasks so that U.S. Customs and Border Protection can focus on fieldwork, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. The troops “will not be performing law enforcement functions or interacting with immigrants, or migrants,” Jean-Pierre said. “This will free up Border Patrol agents to perform their critical law enforcement duties.”
The troops are expected to be at the border next week, staying for 90 days, and will be pulled from the Army and Marine Corps. The U.S. military has long provided support to the Department of Homeland Security on the border and a surge of personnel to the area is not unprecedented. There are already 2,500 National Guard members at the border.
Immigrant advocates and some Democrats have urged President Biden to end restrictions and restore full access to the U.S. immigration system for asylum seekers. But previous moves by the Biden administration to lift Title 42 were blocked in court after Republican officials, citing a migrant surge would strain their budgets, sued the administration.
Standard immigration rules at the border will once more be in effect at midnight on May 12 barring a last-minute court order.
This story was originally published May 3, 2023 at 10:51 AM.