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WASHINGTON – For weeks before the mid-term elections, President Trump has warned in a threatening manner about the threat posed by a caravan of migrants flocking from Central America to the Mexican border with the United States. It was a dreadful mix of criminals and "unknowns from the Middle East," said darkly, which was a real national emergency.
But since last week's election, Trump once tweeted about the caravan: publish a proclamation banning those who illegally cross the border from seeking asylum in the United States. Fox News, which faithfully amplified Trump's warnings about migrants, also remained silent on the subject.
Even before polling day, there was little discussion that Trump was operating the caravan for political purposes. But analysts, historians and veterans of previous administrations have stated that there were few comparable examples of commander-in-chief warning against what he called an imminent threat, but only to let it fall as soon as people have voted.
Although the caravan disappeared from the television screens, the cost of Mr. Trump's response was not changed. Nearly 6,000 soldiers on active duty are still deployed from the Gulf Coast to southern California, where they set up tents and draw concertina wires to deal with a band of scavengers who are not still close to the border.
"Now that the political utility of troops on the southern border to face a fictitious threat of caravan invasion is over," said Admiral James G. Stavridis, former commander of South Command military forces, "hope the president will put the troops away so that they can be with their families – especially during the holidays."
Some Defense Ministry officials fear Trump may do the opposite – request an exception to the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the government from using active service troops to enforce laws inside. borders of the country.
According to a purely political calculation, analysts on both sides said that seizing the caravan mobilized Republican voters, dramatizing immigration to echo Mr. Trump's political base. But it is much less clear that the ominous warnings have helped Republican candidates with independents or other voters making a late decision.
In places like Arizona, where the Democratic Senate candidate, Kyrsten Sinema, Martha McSally, who narrowly beat her Republican opponent, analysts, said the caravan could have turned against her. Ms McSally echoed Trump's speech on the coming wave of migrants, calling it "a matter of public and national security".
David Axelrod, a former assistant to President Barack Obama, said on Twitter: "The calculated rumors of the president on the caravan, which we have heard very little since polling day, may have sank the @GOP in AZ . "
In exit polls, voters who decided in the three days leading up to the elections said they voted for Democrats compared to Republicans between 53% and 41%. This coincides with the period during which Mr. Trump redoubled his focus on the caravan, rejecting the opinion of his associates who wanted to broadcast an advertisement promoting a healthy economy.
Exit surveys did not contain any specific questions about the caravan. But they showed that the voters who had decided in the last week of the campaign, before Mr. Trump pushed at the last minute, chose the Democrats at the expense of the Republicans (49% to 48%) .
Republican pollsters privately reported that their party had won only three Senate seats held by Democrats in the Senate, as proof of the ambiguity of the Caravan Crusade on Republicans.
Mr Trump said the elections took place campaign after campaign, "the caravan, public order and common sense". In Mesa, Arizona, on October 19, he said, "You have bad guys these groups. You have difficult people in these groups. And I'll tell you what – this country does not want them. D & # 39; AGREEMENT.? We do not want them. "
A day earlier, he had tweeted about "the onslaught of our country on the southern border, including the criminal elements and drugs that were flocking".
Mr. Trump has broadcast footage of an undocumented immigrant on trial for the murder of a police officer. His campaign organization produced an advertisement featuring migrants attempting to climb a wall to portray the issues of the election.
"I had never seen an American president, having traveled the country about this national crisis, and then the day after an election hike," said Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian at Rice University.
The closest parallel that Mr. Brinkley drew was that of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had seized – and wrongly interpreted – two obscure encounters between American and North Vietnamese warships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 as pretext to accelerate America's engagement in the Vietnam War. . However, he said, Mr. Trump's response was of a different order.
"It was a dangerous form of xenophobia, aimed solely at electoral purposes and which ultimately had nothing to do with genuine national security," Brinkley said.
For the troops, so far, it was essentially an expensive field trip. The cost of deployment is not known, but budget officials estimate that it could reach $ 200 million if the 15,000 soldiers promised by Mr. Trump were finally sent.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday that the Pentagon "captured" spending on a daily basis and would inform the public when it knew the full cost. On Wednesday, Mattis plans to meet soldiers at Donna Base Camp, the advanced operations base built last month near the Rio Grande.
Mr. Mattis stated that the mission had not changed. the troops did not receive additional combat pay or hostile fire pay. His visit, said a defense official, aims to be discreet and recall his time as a naval general, where he was able to meet front-line troops with little fanfare.
Living conditions at Donna's base camp are unfavorable, but since its construction this month, the army has added showers and a larger living space, apart from the initial allocation of tents.
Trump's supporters said the troops would not take into account his sudden lack of importance to the caravan.
"Knowing the troops, knowing how busy they are, they are not focused on him," said Jack Keane, a retired four-star general, former vice chief of staff of the United States. ;army. "They have a job to do."
But other former army officers said the soldiers were well aware of the political motivation of their mission. Lacking anything else, they will quickly understand Trump's loss of interest in the caravan, which will boost their already exhausted morale.
"After spending months in the desert doing nothing, at least we had scorpions with which we could fight," said retired army lieutenant-colonel John A. Nagl, who served in the United States. Operation Desert Shield in 1990 and 1991.
"But we had a real mission," he said. "These guys do not have that."
