Washington (AP) – The Pentagon is preparing orders for the deployment of at least 1,000 additional active soldiers to strengthen President Donald Trump’s growing repression on Friday, US officials said.
They said that around 500 additional soldiers – largely a head office unit of the 10th mountain division in Fort Drum in New York – will be sent to the southwest border. And around 500 navies will go to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some of the detained migrants will be held.
The officials, who spoke under the cover of anonymity because the announcements were not made, said that there had been ongoing discussions on deployments and that the figures could increase if additional details were developed.
The Pentagon rushed to set in motion the executive orders of Trump signed shortly after its entry into office on January 20. The first group of 1,600 troops in active service deployed at the border last week.
The deployments reflect Trump’s determination to extend the role of soldiers in his campaign to close the border and return the migrants detained in their country of origin.
The troops going to the border should help to set up concertina cable barriers and provide the necessary transport, intelligence and other support for the border patrol. Troops going to Guantanamo could help prepare the installation for an influx of migrants and do other support tasks.
Speaking on “Fox and Friends” Friday morning, defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that he thought that the United States could obtain “thousands of people in tents, obtained in places of Guantanamo Bay” .
But he also said that there was the possibility that hardened criminals or members of violent gangs can also be accommodated there. Consequently, he said that the Ministry of Defense was preparing detention facilities in Guantanamo “which are mainly supermax prisons” to use them temporarily.
The officials said all week that there will probably be deployments of additional troops to help secure the southern border – potentially deployed rapidly in the coming days. The possible total deployed could be up to 10,000.
Before Trump returned to the White House, there were already around 2,500 childcare forces and reserve constantly deployed on the border. The officials noted that, taking into account the length of the border of almost 2,000 miles with Mexico, it will take additional forces to help set up large rollers of concertina wire barriers and will provide support to the patrol border.
The 1,100 army soldiers and 500 navies were ordered to deploy on the border last week all arrived in El Paso, Texas and San Diego, and many have already started working.
In addition, the US military provides military aircraft to the expulsion flights from the Ministry of Homeland Security for more than 5,000 migrants detained. At least some of them should go to the US military detention center in Guantanamo Bay.
Trump said on Wednesday that his administration planned to send the “worst criminal foreigners” to Guantanamo. He ordered the Pentagon to prepare to contain up to 30,000 migrants. He said that some of the migrants could not trust to stay in their country of origin once they are returned.
“Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them to come back, so we’re going to send them to Guantanamo,” Trump said.
This is not the first time that migrants have taken place in Guantanamo. The American authorities have held migrants intercepted at sea in an establishment known as migrant operations center, including people in Haiti and Cuba.