The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it would deploy 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border to help deal with an expected wave of illegal immigrants starting next week.
The soldiers and Marines won’t be making arrests but will be assigned to support duties, including bringing more eyes to the border to keep tabs on illegal activity. The goal is to free up Customs and Border Protection personnel to perform their regular duties.
The Department of Homeland Security needs the help because the Biden administration will give up its Title 42 pandemic power to expel illegal immigrants on May 11, when the COVID-19 emergency expires. Title 42 has allowed CBP to immediately expel some illegal immigrants, and the tactic has helped keep the chaotic border from turning catastrophic.
The 90-day troop deployment marks an escalation of the country’s border defenses and is a retreat for President Biden. He had promised a more welcoming approach at the border but has been forced to use some of President Trump’s tactics to quell border chaos.
Past administrations have generally tapped the National Guard for border duty, but the Pentagon said it is sending active-duty troops this time — at least at first. Officials said they hope reservists can be rotated into duty and that Homeland Security eventually hires contractors to fill the troops’ jobs.
“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,” the department said in a statement.
SEE ALSO: ‘Smoke and mirrors’: Trump’s DHS secretary pans Biden border moves
Chad Wolf, who served as acting homeland security secretary in the Trump administration, doubted the deployment would make much difference. He called it “smoke and mirrors.”
“I think this is all for public relations reasons,” Mr. Wolf told The Washington Times. “They want to show and demonstrate to the American people and others that they’re doing something.”
Currently, 2,500 troops, mostly National Guard, are on the border. Every president dating to George W. Bush has tapped the Pentagon to assist with border duty.
Mr. Wolf said Mr. Biden’s deployment won’t achieve as much as prior ones because the current administration’s attitude toward the border is backward.
The Trump team deployed troops to free up agents to patrol the border and to interdict and return illegal immigrants, he said. For the Biden administration, agents are processing and releasing migrants, so freeing more agents to enter the field largely means a faster catch-and-release.
“All of these things are just further going to incentivize the crisis,” Mr. Wolf said. “The guardsmen, while it sounds good, does nothing to solve the problem.”
SEE ALSO: DHS orders employees to drop regular duties, shift to coming border surge
Mr. Wolf oversaw the department as it achieved the best border numbers in modern history. In late 2019 and into 2020, the number of illegal border crossers plummeted. Those who did attempt were, by and large, expelled or detained.
Things turned south as the Biden administration took office and erased the get-tough Trump policies. The results have been record numbers of illegal border crossers, record levels of fentanyl smuggling detected, record numbers of terrorism suspects spotted sneaking across the southwestern border and record profits for smuggling cartels.
Title 42 powers kept a lid on activity, allowing some of the record number of border crossers to be turned back to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. When Title 42 expires next week, the administration expects the record wave to grow into what Mr. Wolf called a “surge on top of a surge.”
The last-minute deployment also challenges Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ claim that he has had a plan in place for months to prepare for the end of Title 42.
“The president and his team knew that the end of Title 42 risks an unprecedented migrant surge at the Southwest border, yet the Department of Homeland Security waited until virtually the last minute to request Department of Defense support,” said Sen. Roger F. Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “President Biden could have avoided this entire situation by taking seriously the crisis at our border.”
The Pentagon said troops will play a role in surveillance, monitoring sensors that alert CBP to illegal intrusions into the U.S. between the ports of entry. Troops also will handle data entry and warehouse support.
Immigrant rights advocates were dismayed by what they called “another move straight from Trump’s anti-immigrant playbook.”
“The southern border is already highly militarized. Deploying more troops is a reckless political ploy that serves only to legitimize racist and xenophobic fearmongering,” said Andrea Carcamo, policy director at Freedom for Immigrants. “People fleeing persecution and those searching for opportunity should be met with dignity, fairness and the ability to exercise their right to protection. More troops at the border is the last thing we need.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre balked at the notion that Mr. Biden was following Mr. Trump’s lead and instead blamed Congress for the situation.
“This would not be necessary if Congress would act,” she said. “If Congress would act and do their jobs and meet us halfway and do this in a bipartisan way, we would not have to do this.”
She said troop deployment was “a common practice.” The Pentagon said it has had a role in border security for 18 of the past 22 years.
When Mr. Trump deployed additional troops in October 2018 amid growing migrant “caravans,” press coverage cast it as an “election-season” ploy.
Then-Sen. Kamala Harris said the deployment was taking troops away from their families and called it a “demonstration for the TV cameras based on a political agenda.”
“The [Trump] administration made a decision to deploy them based on a political agenda, and I believe that it is inappropriate to require the limited resources of the United States military to be used in such a way,” she said at the time.
Ms. Harris is now vice president, and Mr. Biden has tapped her to play a central role in reducing the number of illegal immigrants rushing the border.
She isn’t the only one to apparently have had a change of heart.
Kelly Magsamen, who in 2018 was a national security expert at the Center for American Progress, told Politico that deploying troops was “a craven misuse of the U.S. armed forces.” She said she was surprised that Trump administration Defense Secretary James Mattis agreed to the request because it was “not an appropriate use of the military.”
Ms. Magsamen now serves as chief of staff to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
VoteVets, a liberal advocacy group, blasted Mr. Trump’s 2018 deployment as “a political ploy to blow upon the embers of racism and nativism.”
The group didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday on Mr. Biden’s deployment.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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