Rep. Brown: The Administration's Border Strategy Is Incoherent, And The Sustained Use Of Active Duty Personnel Is Unprecedented

Statement

House Armed Services Committee Vice Chair, Congressman Anthony Brown (MD-04), released the following statement after reports that Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan announced "several thousand" more American troops would be deployed to the southern border.

"In the Fall of 2018 right before the midterm elections, the President, in conjunction with his trumped-up rhetoric of the threat posed by a migrant caravan, sent thousands of active duty troops to the border in an unprecedented surge comparable to the magnitude of our presence in Iraq and Syria combined. Immediately following the elections, our troop presence on the southern border was drastically reduced. Since then, the President has doubled down on the military's role, and has threatened to declare a manufactured national emergency because he cannot get his funding for his ineffective wall. Now the administration is reportedly poised to deploy thousands of additional troops to the border, with no coherent strategy, against the backdrop of increased Presidential threats to declare a national emergency."

"The administration's border security strategy is incoherent, and the use of active duty personnel to implement this incoherent strategy is unprecedented. This use of active duty Armed Forces for the "same types of logistical, support and even clerical jobs that National Guard soldiers sent to the border earlier this year are already doing," including routine maintenance of CBP assets, is gravely irresponsible. The President has repeatedly threatened to build the wall without approval from Congress, by using the military, and has even gone so far as to assert he will station troops on the border until he gets his way. We face critical challenges at home and abroad, and using the military as a pawn in a political game degrades our readiness and our ability to face them."

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