USA

In the past four months, the Pentagon has sent thousands of active-duty combat troops and armored Stryker combat vehicles to the southwestern border to confront what President Trump declared on his first day in office was an “invasion” of migrants, drug cartels and smugglers.

That’s not all. The military has also dispatched U-2 spy planes, surveillance drones, helicopters and even two Navy warships to surveil the borders and coasts round the clock.

The buildup of forces underscores how Mr. Trump is breaking with his predecessors’ practice of mostly limiting deployments along the U.S.-Mexico border to small numbers of active-duty soldiers and reservists. About 2,500 active-duty troops were on the border at the end of the Biden administration. Now there are about 8,600.

It’s working so naturally the NYTimes is upset.

A South American gang with many illegal alien members that cropped up to rival the infamous Tren de Aragua is victimizing vulnerable rural Americans, warns crime expert Robert Charles.

“I’ve read some of the public accounts that suggest that this offshoot group is trying to distinguish itself by being more violent,” Charles, who was formerly an assistant secretary of state at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said of Anti-Tren. With the recent charges against almost 20 accused members of the gang by the Trump Justice Department, the new threat has garnered more attention, Western Journal explained.

The president’s migrant crackdown has fueled an increasingly angry atmosphere – and some border agents are praising ‘Daddy Trump’

Osvaldo Ruiz and a friend were hiking through an isolated stretch of mountains, just a few miles from the sprawling US-Mexico border wall that fringes San Diego, when the federal agent stopped them in their tracks.

It was late March, mid-morning, and Ruiz, who works for a local non-profit called Border Angels, was busy. That day he was scouting a new route where his group could leave life-saving water and food for the sporadic waves of migrants who still cross through these desolate borderlands. Ruiz and his friend, a fellow Border Angels member, already knew they were being watched. A helicopter had been buzzing overhead for the past several hours, tracking them.

Shortly after the duo sat down for a mid-hike coffee break, the border patrol agent appeared on the trail. Four or five other officers lagged behind him in the distance.