New: The Pentagon is sending 1,500 service members to the country’s southern border in the first of what will be several waves of troops that could rise to 10,000 in the coming weeks. That first batch is expected to include 1,000 soldiers and about 500 Marines, on top of the nearly 2,500 troops previously deployed to the region, Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports.
Also involved: “Helicopters with associated crews, and intelligence analysts [will] support increased detection and monitoring efforts” along the southwest border, acting defense secretary Robert Salesses announced Wednesday.
And the Air Force has been tasked with “deportation flights” of at least 5,000 detained migrants “from the San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas sectors” to points elsewhere, according to Salesses. Those aircraft will be C-17s and C-130s, Decker reports.
So far, the Pentagon has plans “for about three companies worth of personnel, so that’s somewhere in the couple-hundred-range who were moving today,” a defense official told reporters Wednesday. “I just don’t know if they’ve actually arrived or if it will be sometime overnight or in the morning,” they said.
Will they be armed? “That’s really just based on what the particular security situation is,” the official said, and added, “As of right now, none of the forces that we’re sending are intended to be used for law enforcement.”
To date, none of the troops at the border have direct law-enforcement roles due to a rule that stems from the 19th-century Posse Comitatus Act that generally bars troops from participating in civilian law enforcement. However, Decker reports, Trump could override that law under the 1807 Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to call out the troops if “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” hinders the execution of state or federal law.
The U.S. military will also help build “temporary and permanent physical barriers to add additional security to curtail illegal border crossings and illicit trafficking” along the border, said Salesses.
Talking tough: “This is just the beginning,” the acting Pentagon chief said in his statement. “In short order, the [Defense] Department will develop and execute additional missions in cooperation with [the Department of Homeland Security], federal agencies, and state partners to address the full range of threats outlined by the President at our nation’s borders,” he added. “President Trump directed action from the Department of Defense on securing our nation’s borders and made clear he expects immediate results. That is exactly what our military is doing under his leadership,” said Salesses.
Worth noting: Monthly migrant apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border declined steeply between December 2023 and December 2024—from 249,740 to 47,326 apprehensions—as public Customs and Border Protection data reveals.
How big is the Trump administration’s deportation challenge? It’s nearly impossible to know exactly how many undocumented immigrants are inside the U.S. today. A Department of Homeland Security estimate from January 2022 put the number around 11 million people; the Pew Research Center arrived at a similar number last July. “However, the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in 2022 was still below the peak of 12.2 million in 2007,” Pew noted.
Americans seem to be split on the question of deporting *all* undocumented immigrants. According to recent polling from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, “Removing immigrants who are in the country illegally and have not committed a violent crime is highly divisive, with only about 4 in 10 U.S. adults in support and slightly more than 4 in 10 opposed.” (61% of Republicans approve; just 20% of Democrats say they feel the same.)
A separate survey of voters taken two weeks ago showed a majority of “Americans support pathways to legal citizenship for undocumented immigrants as an alternative to mass deportation.” About 65% of those surveyed agreed; 35% did not. (Among Republicans that drops to 47% in agreement, with 53% preferring mass deportations.)
Why it matters: “To remove a sizable proportion of the estimated 11 million or more undocumented immigrants from the country, Trump would need not only broad but sustained public support,” Axios reported Sunday off their own recent survey results, which the outlet headlined as, “Americans favor deporting undocumented immigrants, until they’re asked how.”
Also in that data: “Just 38% of Americans support using active-duty military to find and detain undocumented immigrants in U.S. cities and towns,” Axios reported, while noting that is a modest drop from November polling from Ipsos-Syracuse University featuring the same questions; at the time, 41% supported using the active duty military to deport migrants.
But “the vast majority [of Americans] favor deportations of people who have been convicted of violent crimes,” AP reports. And this sentiment is reflected in the recent passage of the Laken Riley Act, which stipulates undocumented immigrants arrested for theft or violent crimes be held in jail pending trial. That bill passed in a 263 to 156 vote in the House Wednesday, and a 64-35 vote in the Senate on Monday.
Developing: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials want to build four new detention centers with 10,000 beds each, along with 14 smaller facilities that each contain around 1,000 beds each, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
“That would likely mean tens of billions in taxpayer funds sent to private prison companies,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, after reviewing ICE’s own public math under the Laken Riley Act. When that act was proposed, “ICE said it would cost $15 million a month to run a 1,000-bed new detention center, or $493.15 per bed per day,” said Reichlin-Melnick.
Given that ICE says it wants up to 55,000 new beds, “That’s $27.1 million per day,” which adds up to about $9.9 billion per year, he said.
ICYMI: The Trump administration removed schools and churches of immigration enforcement protections on Tuesday. “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense,” he added.
ICE agents have already begun visiting Maryland high schools known for having a large population of students who speak English as their second language. Administrators are being advised to “Ask the officer to remain outside the school building while you consult with the Office of General Counsel,” and “If there is no valid subpoena, search warrant, or arrest warrant,” not to “release any personally identifiable information.”
New: Trump’s DHS is “granting immigration-enforcement authority to several agencies at the Justice Department, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Marshals Service,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing an internal memo from Huffman.
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson with Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2018, the so-called “U.S.-China trade war” began when President Trump placed tariffs on Chinese solar panels and washing machines.
Trump 2.0, cont.
For feds, Trump’s war on diversity gains speed: The Trump administration is planning to lay off all federal employees who worked in a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility office as of this past Election Day and has instructed agencies to immediately place such workers on paid administrative leave.
By the close of business Wednesday, agencies must instruct employees of the office closures, take down any public-facing trace of those offices, withdraw any related guidance or directives they have pending and cancel all DEIA trainings, Government Executive’s Eric Katz reported.
Moving quickly: Agencies must update OPM on their efforts to implement the memo by Thursday, including by providing a list of all affected employees. They will then coordinate with OPM to develop their reduction-in-force plan for all affected employees, which they must finalize by Jan. 31.
Federal employees have also been ordered to report each other for failing to comply with the diversity purges, with “adverse consequences” promised if they do not, the New York Times reports. “There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information,” the message reads, and warns a “failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”
Related reading:
And lastly: The Republican-led House just announced a new investigation into the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. “The work will be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (GA-11) and exist as a Select Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-4),” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement Wednesday.
And it comes at arguably an odd time, Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted Wednesday. Consider, he wrote on social media, “Republicans spent the last two days declining to make comments about Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons because they want to look forward, not back. Now the House has announced a committee to re-investigate Jan. 6.” More, here.
