More US troops deploying to US-Mexico border

The Pentagon will deploy roughly 1,500 more active-duty soldiers to the southern border to support President Donald Trump’s expanding crackdown on immigration, a U.S. official said Friday.

That would eventually bring the total to about 3,600 active-duty troops at the border.

The order has been approved, the official said, to send a logistics brigade from the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty in North Carolina. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deployment has not yet been publicly announced.

The Pentagon has been scrambling to put in motion Trump’s executive orders signed shortly after he took office on Jan. 20. The first group of 1,600 active-duty troops has already deployed to the border, and close to 500 more soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division are expected to begin moving in the coming days.