The roughly 8,000 active-duty troops deployed to the Mexico border in the runup to the midterm elections are getting valuable training, Army Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday.
So far, the Army has no indication that the border deployment formerly called Operation Faithful Patriot is a drag on the service, Esper said during an appearance at the American Enterprise Institute.
“They are getting training out of that. They are deploying. They are putting their equipment on trains and whatnot or convoying and deploying to a location, and they are offloading,” he said.
The secretary’s comments come after the Pentagon officially discarded the Faithful Patriot mission name this week without any public explanation. It acknowledged the decision a day after the midterm elections.
The Army units deploying to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California include logistics, aviation, and engineering. President Trump ordered the deployment, saying that thousands of migrants walking north through Mexico are set to invade the U.S.
An additional 2,100 National Guard troops have been at the southern border since April, which was when the president declared a crisis of illegal immigration.
Esper said “time will tell” about how the active-duty deployment, set to extend into mid-December, might affect the Army.
“I don’t see … the units I’m referring to seeing a degradation of readiness,” he said. “Everything else we’ll have to see over time. I don’t want to speculate on this or that, but that’s where I see things right now as it stands.”
