Defense Secretary Vows to Use Thousands of Active-Duty Troops to Secure Border

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed during a visit to the southwestern border on Monday to use thousands of U.S. active-duty troops to help stem migrant crossings, a top priority for President Trump.

Mr. Hegseth and Thomas D. Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, toured El Paso by air Monday morning in a line of Army Black Hawk helicopters, landing near a section of border wall. They then drove to a remote desert hilltop where soldiers, Border Patrol agents and reporters gathered for a news conference.

“The charge that the president has given us,” Mr. Hegseth said, is “to get 100 percent operational control of the southern border.”

“That means setting the right policy, which we’re doing, having the right procedure in place, the right personnel and, ultimately, the platforms and systems to maintain it.”

Motioning to the Army troops gathered nearby, he added, “They’re motivated to be here because they’re defending their friends, their family, their communities, their church, their schools, their loved ones, from an invasion of people whose intentions we don’t know.”

About 1,600 Marines and Army soldiers have been rushed to the U.S. border in California and Texas in the past two weeks to help build barriers and help law enforcement authorities, joining 2,500 Army forces already there.

On Monday, Pentagon officials said that about 500 additional soldiers from the headquarters of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, N.Y., were deploying to Texas to oversee the border operations.

The deployments come even as the state of the border is fairly calm, with crossings having fallen sharply in recent months after the Biden administration took steps to limit migration.

Mr. Trump has issued an executive order that gives the military an explicit role in immigration enforcement. It also directed the Defense Department to come up with a plan “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion.”

A federal law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, forbids the use of armed forces for law enforcement purposes on U.S. soil unless expressly authorized by Congress or the Constitution.

The main exception to that act is the Insurrection Act. The law, which is more than 200 years old, grants the president power to deploy the military domestically when faced with “unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion” that prevent the execution of federal or state laws. Mr. Hegseth has not ruled out using the Insurrection Act.

Speaking near Sunland Park, N.M., Mr. Hegseth said troops along the border are important because they “relieve Border Patrol to have the opportunity to actually do the interdiction.”

He added: “Under the Biden administration, the Border Patrol was too busy babysitting migrants who were being processed to enter the country. Now, because crossing the border is illegal and will get you deported, less people are crossing, more assets are calling out the people crossing the border.”

About 30 active-duty Army soldiers and about a dozen Border Patrol agents — several astride horses — joined Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Homan just a short distance from the border wall that separates Mexico and the United States.

The site was no more than a few dozen feet from a dramatic drop to the rolling desert below, which leads through desert scrub to the foothills of Mount Cristo Rey. The border wall slices through this expanse of desert, separating a rail line in New Mexico from a stretch of highway in Juarez, Mexico.

After Mount Cristo Rey, a mountain with a 29-foot limestone carving of Christ at the top, the hill appears to be the highest point, often serving as a lookout point for both law enforcement and smugglers of humans and contraband.