The cost of sending approximately 5,900 active-duty personnel to the U.S.-Mexico border to provide support to Customs and Border Protection amounts to $72 million, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.
In a statement, Army Col. Rob Manning said the $72 million figure represented “the estimated cost to deploy, operate, sustain, and redeploy forces”. He added that “[t]he total cost of the operation has yet to be determined and will depend on the total size, duration, and scope of the DoD support to [the Department of Homeland Security].”
Manning’s statement came after The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon had disclosed in a report to Congress that an additional $138 million had been spent on deploying 2,100 National Guard troops who have been performing a separate border mission since April. That would bring the total cost of the two missions to $210 million under current plans, though the total would grow if the active-duty mission is extended beyond the current completion date of Dec. 15.
About 2,800 of the active-duty troops are in South Texas, far from a caravan of Central American migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, south of California. The movement of the migrants into Mexico last month was the stated reason that President Trump ordered the military to provide support for Customs and Border Protection. – READ MORE