Joint Chiefs Chair visits border as military presence expands

Gen. Dan Caine, the new chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made an unannounced visit to the southwestern border over the weekend for a firsthand look at the military’s growing role in helping to stem migrant crossings, a top priority for President Donald Trump.

That Caine made his first official trip to the border as chair underscores the importance of the mission to the White House, and the Pentagon, even as crossings have dropped precipitously during the Trump administration.

Caine, a former Air Force F-16 fighter pilot, visited the military headquarters for the operation at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, on Saturday. He then took a 30-minute Blackhawk helicopter ride to a Border Patrol station at Douglas, Arizona, where he received briefings, the Joint Staff said on social media Tuesday.

The Pentagon has dispatched nearly 7,000 active-duty troops along the border from California to Texas, including armed infantry and support troops from the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson in Colorado. The military is also flying surveillance drones and other reconnaissance aircraft and has ordered two Navy ships to conduct patrols along the Pacific and Gulf coasts.

Caine’s visit came after Trump this month announced a plan to turn a narrow strip along the Mexican border in California, Arizona and New Mexico into a military installation as part of his effort to curtail illegal crossings.

The plan, set out in a White House memo, calls for transferring authority over the 60-foot-wide strip of federal land, known as the Roosevelt Reservation, to the Defense Department from other Cabinet agencies.

Military forces patrolling that area could then temporarily detain migrants passing through for trespassing on a military reservation, the Pentagon’s Northern Command said in a statement Monday.

Dispatching large numbers of front-line combat forces underscores how Trump is breaking with past presidents’ recent practice of mostly limiting deployments along the U.S.-Mexico border to small numbers of active-duty soldiers and reservists.

So far, the active-duty troops have been helping to build barriers and support law enforcement agencies, as have active-duty and reservist forces sent to the border in past years, including during Trump’s first term.

But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on his first full official day on the job in January that “whatever is needed at the border will be provided.” He did not rule out Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, a more than 200-year-old law, to allow the use of armed forces for law enforcement duty.

Taking such an action would plunge the military into politically charged territory that has deeply concerned congressional Democrats.

The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security are expected to forward recommendations to the White House in the next few days on whether Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.