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04-05-2023
WASHINGTON: The administration of US President Joe Biden is sending 1,500 additional soldiers to the United States border with Mexico as the country prepares for the lifting of contentious, pandemic-era restrictions later this month.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Pentagon said it had approved a request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to send the added military personnel to the border for 90 days.
The troops could arrive by May 10, a Pentagon spokesman told reporters.
The soldiers will perform “non-law enforcement duties” such as data entry and warehouse support, DHS said in an earlier statement, attributing the new deployment to an “anticipated increase in migration” at the southwest US border.
“This support will free up DHS law enforcement personnel to perform their critical law enforcement missions,” the department said.
The move comes amid concerns that the end of Title 42, a policy first imposed by ex-President Donald Trump in March 2020, will lead to a dramatic increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving at the US-Mexico border in search of protection.
Set to expire on May 11, Title 42 has allowed US authorities to rapidly turn away most migrants and refugees who arrive, without having to assess their asylum claims. It has drawn widespread condemnation from rights groups.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also confirmed that the additional Department of Defense personnel would perform “administrative tasks” at the frontier.
“They will not be performing law enforcement functions or interacting with immigrants or migrants,” Jean-Pierre said.
The 1,500 new forces would add to an ongoing deployment of about 2,500 National Guard troops.
Asked about the expanded deployment during a news conference, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told reporters that the US is a sovereign nation and that Mexico respected its decisions but rights advocates slammed the plan, saying it sends the wrong message to asylum seekers, many of whom are fleeing widespread violence, political instability, poverty and other systemic problems in their home countries.
“This will absolutely send [the] message of militarizing the border to deter migrants,” Gregory Chen, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), said on Twitter. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
