Thousands of US troops will be sent to the border with Mexico after President Donald Trump demanded a stronger presence there, CNN reported.
About 2,200 military personnel from the North Group are already on the border, and are based in El Paso, Texas. Their tasks include supporting the work of the US Customs and Border Protection. There are also about 4,500 National Guard troops on the border.
It is not yet known which units will be sent to the border this week and whether they will be armed. However, officials say the military will perform roughly the same tasks as Group North. However, they are prohibited from arresting migrants, conducting searches and seizing illegal substances, among other things. The military can only assist in transporting migrants to and from detention centres.
Every day the border is illegally crossed from 1.1 thousand to 1.3 thousand migrants. Earlier, Trump, answering questions from journalists in the Oval Office, did not rule out that the US may use the armed forces to fight drug cartels on the territory of Mexico. According to him, drug cartels are responsible for the deaths of 250,000-300,000 Americans a year.
The question came as the president was signing an executive order recognising Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organisations. In his inaugural address, Trump promised to declare a state of emergency on the border with Mexico over migrants, deploy the army to contain them and rename the Gulf of Mexico as the American Gulf of Mexico.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum showed a map of “Mexican America,” the name for a part of North America used on maps centuries ago, and said it “sounds good” for renaming the US.
“Guaranteeing the states protection against invasion”
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order suspending the passage of illegal migrants across the country’s southern border, the White House said.
The statement said:
“Today, President Trump signed an Executive Order that suspends the physical entry of aliens engaged in an invasion of the United States through the southern border.”
Trump instructed the US Department of Homeland Security, as well as the US Justice Department and State Department, to take all possible measures to remove illegal aliens who enter the country through the southern border.
The agencies are instructed to “take all necessary steps to immediately divert, repatriate and remove” such foreign nationals.
