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Paul Sonne
National security reporter focusing on the U.S. military
The total price of President Trump's military deployment to the border, including the cost of National Guard's strength that has been there since the end of 2018 and grow significantly if the deployments continue into next year, according to analyst estimates and Pentagon figures.
15,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border – possibly equal in size to the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan – is coming to the largesse the military has enjoyed since Trump took office
Although the costs of the border will be a tiny slice of a $ 716 billion annual defense budget, they arrive at the Trump administration is calling on the Pentagon to cut unnecessary expenditures. The White House recently ordered the Pentagon to slash next year's budget for $ 6 billion in response to the largest increase in the federal deficit in six years.
Veterans and Democratic lawmakers have complained that they are politically motivated stunt ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections, at a time when the Pentagon budget is under pressure.
"The place of working in a bipartisan manner to make comprehensive, common-sense, and humane reforms to the immigration system, the President continues to be politically-motivated fear mongering and uses [Department of Defense] "Jim Jefferson on Nov. 1.
Retired Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the deployment as "wasteful" in a message on Twitter and said Marines and soldiers were already overstretched.
Administration officials have defended the deployment. Mattis said this week that the military does not do stunts. The Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan, said that it is necessary to "effectively and safely" handle as many as 7,000 migrants walking towards the border in caravans from Central America.
But military planning documents, dated Oct. 27 and published by Newsweek, predicted that only 20 percent of the migrants, or about 1,400 at the higher end of estimates, were likely to complete the journey to the border, raising questions about the size of the deployment.
"Said Susanna Blume, a Pentagon official and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. "Looking at estimates of the size of the caravan, you could ask the question about the most appropriate use of U.S. active-duty forces."
It is not clear how many U.S. troops will end up on the U.S.-Mexico border.
About 2,000 forces from the National Guard are already there, operating under an order Trump issued in April. Northern Command has said more than 7,000 additional active-duty troops will join them in Arizona, Texas and California. Trump said this week that he will be deploying between 10,000 and 15,000 troops but not including the National Guard.
The cost of the National Guard deployed from April 10 through Sept. 30 amounted to $ 103 million, according to Pentagon figures. The Defense Department expects the Guard to cost an additional $ 308 million through the end of September, including the last quarter of 2018, so long as the operations continue apace.
Active-duty forces, which are more important because they do not require additional pay or benefits.
Travis Sharp, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budget Assessments, estimated that the cost of deploying 8,000 active-duty troops through mid-December in the Guard would amount to $ 40 million to $ 50 million. Should the administration deploy 15,000 active-duty troops, as Trump suggested, the estimated cost would be as much as $ 110 million, Sharp said.
The forces could end up staying in mid-December, depending on the status of the caravans, which by most accounts are still weeks away from the border. An extension of the deployment could result in costs.
Democrats have complained that in addition to paying for the border deployments, the Defense Department internally allocated $ 7.5 million to advanced planning for a 37-mile barrier along the side of a military bombing range in Arizona that abuts the border. Democratic lawmakers said the barrier alone could cost as much as $ 450 million.
Mattis offered a safety justification for the barrier in the testimony of the United States. Critics have said that the project will be funded by the president of the United States.
Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan said last week that the White House had instructed the Pentagon to prepare a $ 700 billion budget for 2020 – about 4.5 percent less than $ 733 billion.
Thomas Spoehr, retired Army Lieutenant General and Director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for National Defense, said many of the units were deploying to the border with their field of operations. He said the expenditure would be marginal in terms of the overall American defense budget.
"The military needs every dollar it can get. Having said that, this is not a thing in the scheme of things, "said Spoehr." It probably will pass unnoticed in terms of the budget. "
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