More Than 1,000 Troops Sent to Secure Southern Border in Latest Deployment

They join more than 10,000 troops already deployed to the border as part of Joint Task Force-Southern Border.

U.S. military personnel install concertina wire on top of the wall along the U.S.–Mexico border between San Diego and Tijuana near the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego on April 23, 2025. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

The Trump administration is deploying more than 1,000 additional troops to help secure the southern border, U.S. Northern Command announced in a statement on May 22.

The troops join more than 10,000 service members already deployed to the border as part of Joint Task Force-Southern Border, a cooperative effort between the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security. The new deployment is the latest development in the Trump administration’s continued efforts to secure the southern border.

The troops will be deployed “to provide enhanced sustainment, engineering, medical, and operational capabilities as part of the Department of Defense’s continued whole-of-government approach to gain full operational control of the southern border,” U.S. Northern Command said.

A total of 1,115 troops will be deployed.

Of those service members, 310 will come from two engineer construction companies to help build “mobility routes, force protection infrastructure, and mission-critical facilities.” They will be supplemented by another 125 soldiers from an engineer brigade headquarters and 145 from an engineer battalion, who will deliver engineering command and control, and “execute vertical and horizontal construction missions.”

Another 250 soldiers will come from an expeditionary sustainment command to “coordinate logistics and manage sustainment requirements across the area of operations.” A further 140 soldiers from a quartermaster field feeding company will help support personnel “operating in austere environments” with field feeding, the military’s term for distributing food outside traditional dining facilities. Seventy-five personnel from a medical area support company will provide personnel with “force health protection.”

Another 65 “joint individual augmentees” from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps will go to the Joint Task Force headquarters. Five airmen involved in logistics from Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida will “coordinate rapid logistics and sustainment planning in support of mission requirements.”

Securing the Border

Executive Order 14165, published on President Donald Trump’s first day in office, orders the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to “take all appropriate and lawful action to deploy sufficient personnel along the southern border of the United States to ensure complete operational control.” U.S. Northern Command is the arm through which DoD carries out that mission.

“Over 10,000 service members are deploying / have deployed to the southern border to augment the approximately 2,500 service members already deployed supporting [Customs and Border Protection’s] southern border mission,” U.S. Northern Command states on its website, noting that the exact number of troops will fluctuate because of personnel rotations and additional forces deployed throughout.

The service members do not assist in law enforcement, only supporting detection and monitoring efforts and helping with the construction of physical barriers.

So far in 2025, service members deployed to the border have conducted detection and monitoring operations, and helped develop logistics and transportation infrastructure, which has helped Customs and Border Patrol carry out its law enforcement activities.

The military has been a key cog in the Trump administration’s border security plan. On April 11, Trump issued another executive order instructing the Departments of Defense, Interior, Agriculture, and Homeland Security to take steps to provide federal lands, including the 60-foot-wide Roosevelt Reservation along the southwest border, for use by the military for the purposes of border wall construction and detection and monitoring infrastructure.

From NTD News