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Donald Trump is to deploy more than 5,200 troops to the border with Mexico in what a rights organisation described as an abuse of the military to “further his anti-immigrant agenda of fear and division”.
The announcement, just days before the midterm elections, came as Mexico also cracked down on migrants attempting to cross its own porous southern border.
General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the head of US northern command, said 800 US troops were already en route to the Texas border and 5,200 would be headed to the south-west region by the end of the week, far higher than the 800 to 1,000 initially forecast.
There are about 2,000 US troops deployed in Syria to combat Islamic State, according to the Pentagon.
“That is just the start of this operation,” O’Shaughnessy told reporters. “We will continue to adjust the number and inform you of those. But please know that is in addition to the 2,092 that are already employed from our national guard troops.”
The troops will provide “mission-enhancing capabilities” at ports of entry in Texas, Arizona and California, officials added, and will be armed. They will also have use of helicopters with night-vision capabilities and sensors.
A caravan of several thousand Central American migrants – including entire families and elderly people – has been moving slowly north since mid-October and is now in southern Mexico. They are still 2,000 miles by road and weeks away from reaching a US port of entry, where most are expected to seek asylum as the law allows.
But Trump, who stoked anger and fear over illegal immigration on his way to winning the 2016 presidential election, has seized on the caravan at campaign rallies ahead of next week’s midterm polls, hoping the issue will again fire up his core support.
On Monday he warned that the military would be waiting. “Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border,” Trump tweeted. “Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!” he added.
The American Civil Liberties Union condemned the latest move as political opportunism.
Shaw Drake, policy counsel at its rights centre in El Paso, Texas, said: “President Trump has chosen just before midterm elections to force the military into furthering his anti-immigrant agenda of fear and division. But this harmful action is nothing more than Trump’s latest aggression against immigrant families with children who seek our protection. These migrants need water, diapers and basic necessities – not an army division.”
Drake added: “Sending active military forces to our southern border is not only a huge waste of taxpayer money, but an unnecessary course of action that will further terrorize and militarize our border communities. Military personnel are legally prohibited from engaging in immigration enforcement, and there is no emergency or cost-benefit badysis to justify this sudden deployment.”
Mexico, meanwhile, has also been tightening security on its southern border, where migrants often use rafts to cross the Suchiate river.
On Monday, Mexican marines patrolled the river as people tried to swim and wade across.
Video shared with the Guardian shows a marine in a patrol boat yelling into a megaphone: “This is to save human lives and provide humanitarian badistance. The river conditions are not optimal for being able to cross swimming.”
A Mexican federal police helicopter flies close to the Suchiate river to create a downwash force to discourage migrants from wading across on Monday. Photograph: Santiago Billy/AP
Another video posted on social media shows a government helicopter hovering low over the water, creating turbulent conditions for the immigrants trying to cross the river.
On Sunday, one migrant died after he was hit with a rubber bullet when Mexican federal police rebuffed another group of migrants who tried to enter the country over the international bridge.
Mexico’s interior minister, Alfonso Navarrete, said on Sunday night the police were not equipped with any such weapon and had come under attack as immigrants threw rocks, bottles and firecrackers. Guatemala’s interior ministry claimed the group trying to cross the border had wounded Guatemalan police and used children as human shields.
Mexico routinely complains about the treatment of its own citizens living in the US without the proper papers, but has been detaining and deporting Central Americans in large numbers since 2014.
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