Pentagon Searching For Troops and Aircraft to Fill 'Shortfall' Amid Mexico Tariff Talks, Documents Reveal
By James LaPorta AND Chantal Da Silva On 6/5/19 at 11:50 AM EDT
As a potential trade war looms between the United States and Mexico, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has ordered the Pentagon to backfill a shortfall of U.S. troops and aircraft at the U.S.-Mexico border, caused in part by two state governors' decisions to pull hundreds of National Guard troops from the deployment, according to a new trove of documents obtained by Newsweek.
A shortfall of 900 personnel and 14 aircraft ranging from Predator drones to reconnaissance planes left Pentagon officials to shoulder the burden and scrambling to fill the gap for months.
The problem arose after Governor Gavin Newsom of California and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico—both Democrats—pulled their state's National Guard troops from the border this past February in a sharp rebuke of President Trump's rhetoric of undocumented migrants posing a national security risk to the United States. The move left the Pentagon with a lack of troops and aircraft—a gap officials are currently trying to fill along the southwest border.
https://www.newsweek.com/mexico-border-pentagon-troops-us-immigration
