Pentagon Orders up to 3,000 Troops, Stryker Combat Vehicles to Border
Dan Lamothe, Washington Post, March 1, 2025
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered about 3,000 active-duty troops to the southern U.S. border, including soldiers from a motorized brigade equipped with 20-ton armored Stryker combat vehicles, defense officials familiar with the effort said.
The defense secretary approved the orders Friday, said two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal Defense Department planning. The soldiers are primarily from the 4th Infantry Division’s 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team at Fort Carson, Colorado, and will be joined by soldiers specializing in engineering, intelligence and public affairs, the officials said.
The Pentagon announced the deployment in a statement Saturday afternoon after the news was first reported by The Washington Post. Hegseth has ordered the deployment of the Stryker unit and a helicopter battalion to “reinforce and expand current border security operations to seal the border and protect the territorial integrity of the United States,” the statement said.
The troops will arrive in coming weeks, underscoring the Defense Department’s “unwavering dedication to working alongside the Department of Homeland Security to secure our southern border and maintain the sovereignty, territory integrity, and security of the United States under President Trump’s leadership,” the statement added.
About 2,400 soldiers will deploy with the Stryker brigade combat team and an additional 550 will go with the aviation unit, said another defense official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. A handful of others will join them.
After news of the deployment, Hegseth said in a post on X that the administration is “dead serious about 100% OPERATIONAL CONTROL of the southern border.”
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Stryker vehicles — a lightly armored attack vehicle carrying up to 11 soldiers and typically equipped with a machine gun or grenade launcher — have been used in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, the Biden administration provided some Stryker vehicles to Ukrainian forces, who used them during a cross-border incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. It was not clear Saturday whether vehicles will be mounted with weapons during the deployment.
