The U.S. military is deploying troops and armored vehicles to West Texas, including inside Big Bend National Park, as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
About 200 troops from the Army’s 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo. — a trained combat unit — are already on the ground in and around Big Bend. That number is expected to grow to some 500 in coming weeks, Army officials say.
At a news conference this month in Alpine, Army and border officials said troops will not arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally, according to Marfa Public Radio. Instead, soldiers will assist U.S. Customs and Border Protection with surveillance and intelligence gathering, the Department of Defense announced this week.
Troops will patrol both on foot and in armored vehicles, known as Strykers. The 19-ton vehicles are well-suited for navigating rugged terrain. Army officials did not disclose how many Strykers are being deployed. The vehicles could be outfitted with weapons, if needed.
“If the mission dictates for security purposes that we put our weapons systems on those Strykers, then they will be put on the Strykers,” Major Jared Stefani, who is leading the Big Bend area Army battalion, told reporters.
This is the second wave of troops being sent to beef up border security since Trump took office in January. About 1,500 Marines and Army soldiers arrived shortly after inauguration, joining 2,500 Army forces already there.
Encompassing the rugged Chisos Mountains and Chihuahuan Desert, Big Bend is one of the nation’s largest and most remote national parks. The park spans more than 800,000 acres, making it larger than the state of Rhode Island.
It also sees few border crossings compared to other parts of Texas. In February of this year, Customs and Border Protection reported 165 migrant encounters in Big Bend, compared to 1,600 in Laredo and 2,600 around El Paso the same month. Overall, apprehensions in February dropped to the lowest levels in decades.
Critics of the deployment called the plan a waste of taxpayer dollars and a political stunt.
“Demonstrations over the past several weeks at our parks have shown that hate has no place in our parks,” Sherman Neal II, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Military Outdoors campaign, said in a written statement. “Gateway communities to our national parks understand their economic viability isn’t tied to the chilling effects of militarization, but nested in becoming more inclusive communities for all of us.”
A federal law forbids the use of armed forces for law enforcement purposes on U.S. soil unless authorized by Congress or the Constitution. The Insurrection Act is the only exception. The 200-year-old law grants the president power to deploy the military domestically to suppress insurrections or quell civil unrest.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has not ruled out using the Insurrection Act to control the border.
The goal is “to control every inch of the Southern border,” Hegseth said in a February visit to the border in El Paso and neighboring New Mexico. “Everything is on the table when it comes to securing the border and dealing with cartels.”
The Big Bend region has not seen a large-scale military presence in decades, and news outlets in West Texas said some residents were wary of the development. In 1997, a high school sophomore, Esequiel Hernandez Jr., was shot and killed by a U.S. Marine during a covert drug operation near the border town of Redford while herding his family’s goats.
Border Patrol Big Bend Sector Chief Lloyd Easterling said at the news conference that agents will not be covert.
“Nobody’s going to be hidden,” he said. “We want people to see where they are, because it’s a method of deterrence. That’s a big piece of it.”
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