A US soldier dismounts his Stryker armoured infantry transport on April 4 in Sunland Park, New Mexico. Photo / Paul Ratje, the Washington Post
A US soldier dismounts his Stryker armoured infantry transport on April 4 in Sunland Park, New Mexico. Photo / Paul Ratje, the Washington Post
Using military hardware typically reserved for missions overseas, the Trump Administration looks to send a message that the status quo has changed.
Sergeant 1st Class Carlos Zamora and his fellow soldiers stood alongside their 20-tonne Stryker combat vehicle overlooking a labyrinth of dusty trails and cliffs.
Although US Border Patrol agents had detained two migrants nearby a few hours earlier, Zamora’s deployment - a key facet of President Donald Trump’s militarisation of the US-Mexico frontier - has been quiet so far, he said.
A veteran of four combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, Zamora recalled how he and his team recently observed other potential border crossers who appeared to change their plans abruptly once they spotted the olive-drab armoured vehicle on a hill.
“Ever since the Stryker came into play we see more turn-backs than anything.”
Zamora’s unit - the 4th Infantry Division’s 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, from Fort Carson in Colorado - is serving on the front lines of Trump’s aggressive bid to crack down on illegal migration and secure the southern border.
Since his return to office less than three months ago, the Administration has rapidly assembled a force of about 10,000 troops and positioned them across the porous hinterland spanning Texas to California.
It’s the centrepiece of an expansive initiative that also includes more drone flights and an unusually robust maritime presence off Mexico.
Soldiers assigned to the US-Mexico border say their Stryker combat vehicles appear to have had a deterrent effect on illegal border crossings. Photo / Paul Ratje, the Washington Post
Such hardware typically is reserved for missions overseas.
Under Trump, it is being used to track the movement of people and narcotics bound for the US, monitor cartel activity, and send an unambiguous message that the status quo has changed.
The moves to bolster the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement efforts have coincided with a sharp drop in illegal crossings, though the President’s political opponents question whether this is an appropriate use of the military and relations with Mexico are at a low.
In March, Customs and Border Protection recorded 7180 - down from 28,654 in February and a peak of 370,883 in December 2023 during the Biden Administration.
Here, where New Mexico and Texas converge just west of El Paso, smugglers have for years sent migrants through the treacherous cliffs and trails near Mount Cristo Rey, a nearly 1525m summit topped by an 8.8m statue of Jesus Christ that is visible for kilometres around.
US Border Patrol agents have regularly rescued people who get injured or become stricken by heat - and they have found the remains of many others who are less fortunate.
Trump’s efforts have triggered deep unease in Washington and Mexico City about the military’s fast-expanding presence along the border, as well as whether Trump intends to launch lethal force against Mexico’s cartels. Upon retaking the White House in January, the Administration declared them to be foreign terrorist organisations.
The two governments have worked together for decades to disrupt organised crime stemming from the drug trade, but Trump’s rhetoric has inflamed sensitivities that date to the Mexican-American War.
Soldiers deployed as part of Joint Task Force Southern Border scan an area of Sunland Park, New Mexico, for migrants. Photo / Paul Ratje, the Washington Post
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum this week said she vehemently opposes “any form of intervention or interference” that stands to “subordinate” her country to the US.
Her remarks appeared to be in response to a news report indicating that the Trump Administration continues to debate whether to target the cartels on Mexican soil.
Trump last week issued a presidential memorandum saying that the “complexity of the current situation” at the southern border requires the military to take a more active role.
He ordered the military to take control of federal lands there, explicitly mentioning the Roosevelt Reservation, an 18m-wide strip of land that spans the border across the base of California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
The decision had been anticipated for weeks, with defence officials examining a plan to have active-duty troops hold migrants they encounter who cross the border illegally until law enforcement authorities arrive.
Defence officials have said the plan, first reported by the Washington Post in March, would effectively turn a buffer zone at the border into a satellite military base, creating new legal jeopardy for migrants who cross illegally.
Trump issued an Executive Order on January 20 that declared a national emergency at the border and requested a report later this month from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem with an assessment of the conditions at the border, and a recommendation about whether to invoke the Insurrection Act.
Doing so would allow active-duty troops to take a more direct role in what is typically a domestic law enforcement mission. Such a move - if adopted - is certain to be controversial.
Sean Parnell, a spokesman for Hegseth, did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did officials with the National Security Council.
Claudio Herrera, a Border Patrol agent assigned to the El Paso sector, said the steep drop in illegal crossings is encouraging, but he is watching closely to see how the smuggling networks that operate across the border will adapt to the more muscular US posture.
Army personnel unload a shipment of Strykers at a rail head within Fort Bliss in El Paso. Photo / Paul Ratje, the Washington Post
“They are waiting to see what we are doing, and how they are going to approach this challenge differently,” Herrera said, speaking on a mountain landing overlooking Mexico and El Paso.
The cartels in Ciudad Juarez have profited significantly from human smuggling. And they are ruthless, Herrera said, relying on - and fiercely defending - a network of stash houses on both sides of the border to hide Central and South American migrants who often pay thousands of dollars to flee violence or persecution in their own countries.
Cross-border shootings targeting US authorities have occurred at least five times in the past year, including once in Sunland Park, according to CBP statistics.
For Trump, reinforcement of the southern border makes good on a campaign promise after he and his surrogates repeatedly said that an “invasion” was under way there and that President Joe Biden’s response to it was incompetent.
Democrats point to then-candidate Trump’s scuttling of bipartisan legislation last year that would have introduced new asylum restrictions and other enforcement measures to reduce illegal migration without so drastically expanding the military’s involvement.
After his inauguration and emergency declaration, Pentagon officials initially ordered 1500 troops to supplement the force of 2500 that had been assigned there under Biden.
Additional moves quickly followed, including deployment of the 10th Mountain Division headquarters and its top officer, Major-General Scott Naumann, from Fort Drum in New York to Fort Huachuca in southeast Arizona to oversee the mission.
About 6600 troops, composing what’s known as Joint Task Force Southern Border, now fall under his command.
The Stryker unit, with roughly 2400 soldiers from Colorado, were ordered to the border in February by Hegseth, who declared on social media that the Administration is “dead serious about 100% OPERATIONAL CONTROL of the southern border”.
Strykers saw extensive combat in Afghanistan and Iraq before becoming a component of the war in Ukraine. Photo / Paul Ratje, the Washington Post
The Strykers, which saw extensive combat in Afghanistan and Iraq before becoming a component of the Ukraine war, immediately gave the mission a harder edge.
The eight-wheel armoured vehicles are designed to rapidly deliver infantry troops into battle under fire and can traverse difficult terrain.
Soldiers began deploying in March, initially joining the Border Patrol in their trucks and SUVs before their own military vehicles - 105 Strykers plus more than 100 trucks of other kinds - began to arrive.
The Strykers will be dispersed from Yuma, Arizona, east and south to Texas’s arid Big Bend National Park, and could be joined in some locations by Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, a successor to the wartime Humvee.
On a rain-swept April morning at nearby Fort Bliss, in Texas, soldiers carefully off-loaded dozens of Strykers from rail transport, rolling them slowly to avoid accidents. They then drove them across the military installation to a motor pool area to be staged for further movement.
Captain Austin Miles, a company commander in the brigade, said that to get the first few Strykers from Bliss to the border, soldiers slowly drove them through city streets with escorts from local police and CBP.
Elsewhere along the border, soldiers have begun patrolling both on foot and in Strykers.
More Stryker patrols are expected in the coming weeks, as the Army distributes the vehicles and logistical support for them grows, said Lieutenant-Colonel Sarah Ray, a spokeswoman. CBP, which oversees the Border Patrol, is expected to direct where patrols go.
The US-Mexico border wall is seen reflected in the lens of an advanced camera mounted atop an Army Stryker vehicle. Photo / Paul Ratje, the Washington Post
Lieutenant-Colonel Chad Campbell, who leads the brigade’s 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, (Motto: “Hell on Eight Wheels”) said his brigade was selected for the mission because of the all-terrain capabilities of the Strykers and their powerful cameras.
The vehicles have been configured without the machine guns they would carry in a war zone but can detect people as far as 3.2km away. Soldiers carry rifles and have the right to defend themselves if a dangerous situation emerges.
Active-duty troops do not have legal authority to detain migrants, in accordance with the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits active-duty troops from carrying out law enforcement missions with few exceptions.
Campbell said he has cautioned his soldiers that the mission could get complicated nevertheless. He compared their assignment to one he completed as a lieutenant in the Army National Guard in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina caused widespread devastation and unrest in Louisiana.
“I deployed with that unit and it was not combat. It was not anything we were training up for. It was unique,” Campbell said. “I think by having that mindset of … ‘new mission, same standards’, a well-trained unit can do anything.”
