By TARA COPP and REBECCA SANTANA, Related Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Division of Homeland Safety has requested for 20,000 Nationwide Guard troops to help with immigration roundups throughout the nation, and the Pentagon is reviewing the bizarre request, a U.S. official confirmed to The Related Press.

DHS requested for the troops to assist perform President Donald Trump’s “mandate from the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens,” division spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin stated. She stated DHS will ”use each instrument and useful resource obtainable” to take action as a result of the “safety of American citizens comes first.”

In contrast to the troops deployed on the southern border, these Nationwide Guard models would come from the states and be used to help in deportation operations within the inside of the nation.

How the troops can be used could depend upon whether or not they stay underneath state governors’ management. Underneath the Posse Comitatus Act, troops underneath federal orders can’t be used for home legislation enforcement, however models underneath state management can.

The addition of 20,000 Nationwide Guard troops would offer an enormous enhance to immigration enforcement. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS company chargeable for immigration enforcement within the inside of the nation, has a complete employees of about 20,000 folks unfold throughout three divisions.

Enforcement and Removals Operations, which is the division instantly chargeable for arresting and eradicating individuals who don’t have the appropriate to remain within the nation, has a complete employees of roughly 7,700 folks, together with just a little over 6,000 legislation enforcement officers.

It was unclear why the request was made to the Protection Division and to not the states. The U.S. official spoke on situation of anonymity to supply particulars not but made public.

Trump has been finishing up a wide-ranging crackdown on unlawful immigration, issuing a sequence of government orders designed to cease what he has referred to as the “invasion” of the USA.

The U.S. already has as many as 10,000 troops underneath state and federal orders alongside the U.S.-Mexico border, together with some who are actually empowered to detain migrants they encounter alongside a newly militarized slender strip of land adjoining to the border.

Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem testifies throughout a Home Committee on Homeland Safety listening to, Wednesday, Might 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photograph/Kevin Wolf)

Up to now, these troops have largely been restricted to offering airlift, bolstering the wall, surveillance and administrative assist to release border brokers for arrests or detentions.

Alongside the newly militarized zone, troops have put up warning indicators and accompanied border brokers however left the detention of migrants crossing the border to different companies.

In New Mexico, the place the brand new militarized zone was first created, federal Justice of the Peace judges have began dismissing nationwide safety expenses in opposition to migrants accused of crossing the southern U.S. border by means of the newly designated navy zone, discovering little proof that they have been conscious of the zone.

The request for 20,000 troops was first reported by The New York Occasions.

Initially Revealed: Might 16, 2025 at 5:43 PM EDT