Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration is sending an additional 1,500 troops to the U.S. southern border amid a worsening illegal immigration crisis in preparation for the end of Title 42, a Trump-era border security policy Biden has been working to end since the beginning of his presidency.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the news in a statement on Tuesday, saying that it would be working with the State Department to implement “sweeping measures with our regional partners to reduce irregular migration, ensure safe, orderly, and efficient processing, and promptly remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States. Due to an anticipated increase in migration, DHS requested that the Department of Defense (DoD) augment the 2,500 military personnel currently providing support at the Southwest Border with an additional 1,500 personnel for a period of 90 days. ”
“DoD personnel will be performing non-law enforcement duties such as ground based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support. DoD personnel have never, and will not, perform law enforcement activities or interact with migrants or other individuals in DHS custody. This support will free up DHS law enforcement personnel to perform their critical law enforcement missions,” the statement added.
The DHS has previously said that the end of Title 42 will result in as many as 18,000 migrants attempting to illegally cross the southern border each day, according to an internal document obtained by ABC News.
“The DHS Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) produced projections for post-Title 42 Southwest Border encounters describing low, medium, high, or very high encounter scenarios,” the document says. “These scenarios underpin planning assumptions that generate requirements which in turn drive operational execution. Based on these projections the SBCC is currently planning for 6,000, 12,000 (high) and 18,000 (very high) encounters per day.”