FORT CARSON, Colo. — Approximately 150 soldiers from Fort Carson have been deployed to the southern border as part of President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at stopping illegal immigration into the country, according to a spokesperson with the U.S. Army.
The soldiers form part of the 759th Military Police Battalion Headquarters and the 569th Combat Engineer Company-Armored from Fort Carson, the spokesperson said, noting they were deployed “as an immediate augmentation of military active-duty forces to the Southern Border to carry out directed missions called for by the President to secure the Southern Border and protect and defend the territorial integrity of the United States.”
The deployment of about 1,500 active-duty Army and Marine personnel, including an unknown number of troops coming from Fort Carson, was reported by our Scripps sister station KOAA-TV on Friday, the same day U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) made the announcement.
USNORTHCOM, based at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, serves as the U.S. Department of Defense’s operational lead for forces carrying out President Trump’s executive orders on the border.
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An official for USNORTHCOM told KOAA-TV that 1,500 active-duty personnel would help augment the approximately 2,500 service members already deployed to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the southern border.
Once on the ground, soldiers at the southern border will help with “detection and monitoring efforts as well as repairing and placing physical barriers,” the USNORTHCOME official said.
The deployment of nearly 4,000 personnel to the southern border follows a national emergency declaration by Trump, who said during in his second inaugural address that he would “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.”
The initial deployment of an additional 1,500 active-duty personnel brings the total military forces along the southern border to nearly 4,000.
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