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Additional 20,000 National Guard troops requested to help with deportation efforts

By 

Corey Dickstein

Stars and Stripes • May 16, 2025

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Spc. Cameron Langston, a soldier with the South Carolina Army National Guard, leads his squad past the barrier at the southern border during a foot patrol near Rio Grande City in Texas on May 9, 2025. (U.S. Army)

The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it has requested the Pentagon provide thousands of National Guard troops to bolster efforts to remove undocumented migrants from the United States.

It was not immediately clear what role those forces could play in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts. Officials at DHS, the Pentagon and the National Guard Bureau declined to provide any specific information about the requests or how the Guard forces could be utilized in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“DHS requested 20,000 National Guard members to help carry out the president’s mandate from the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens,” Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s top spokeswoman, said in a statement. “The Department of Homeland Security will use every tool and resource available to get criminal illegal aliens including gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and other violent criminals out of our country. The safety of American citizens comes first.”

A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed the Defense Department had received the latest DHS request for troops but said they could not provide any further information. A National Guard spokesperson referred all questions to the Pentagon.

Since Trump’s January return to the White House, his administration has made the crackdown on undocumented migrants one of its highest priorities. Under Trump’s orders, the Pentagon has surged thousands of active-duty troops to the U.S. southern border and declared large swaths of border-adjacent land in New Mexico and Texas as military installations to increase its authorities to arrest and charge people caught crossing the border illegally. However, that effort was dealt a blow this week when a federal judge in New Mexico, U.S. Chief Magistrate Judge Gregory Wormuth, dismissed trespassing charges against dozens of migrants captured in that territory now controlled by the military. Wormuth ordered the charges dismissed because federal attorneys could not provide him information that one could “reasonably conclude” that the migrants understood they were entering the United States on restricted military land.

There are now more than 10,000 military troops — including active-duty soldiers and Marines and National Guard forces — stationed along the border to assist Border Patrol officers. Those troops include infantry forces with Stryker combat vehicles, troops that fly drones and helicopters, logisticians and engineering forces.

Officials have said more troops could be moved to the border, even as Homeland Security has reported sharp drops in illegal border crossings. Last month, the department reported about 8,000 arrests of migrants crossing the border illegally, down from some 128,000 such arrests in April 2024.

Trump has long promised a massive operation to deport unauthorized immigrants from the country. Last week, he called for an influx of 20,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to boost those efforts, which appeared separate from the National Guard request.

National Guard forces have long been mobilized to conduct domestic operations, including disaster response and aiding other federal agencies, including Homeland Security — especially at the U.S.-Mexico border where they have operated since 2018. But the new request for Guard forces to help in deportation efforts appears to be a first. It was not clear how the Guard troops could be used in those operations. Pentagon and DHS spokespersons declined to say whether they would be used to arrest undocumented migrants or be limited to assisting ICE with other tasks such as transportation and logistics, as most have been used in recent years at the border.

They also declined to say from which states the troops could come and whether they would be deployed on state orders facilitated by their governors or federal orders under the control of the president.

The Pentagon has not yet approved the request, an official said.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel, blasted the new effort to use Guard forces for “civilian law enforcement efforts” in the United States, which she said, “is not part of the National Guard’s mission.”

“Not only does this undermine readiness and our national security, it also means Trump is testing the limits of how he can misuse our military against the American people,” said Duckworth, who was severely wounded flying a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in Iraq. “No one should believe that he will stop at immigrants if this plan moves forward. These are the sorts of things dictators do to destroy democracies and consolidate their own power — and everyone’s freedom is at risk if he succeeds.”