The Pentagon will deploy approximately 3,000 additional active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border over the coming weeks to bolster President Trump’s ongoing crackdown on illegal crossings.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered a Stryker brigade combat team as well as a general support aviation battalion to the border to reinforce  and “protect the territorial integrity of the United States,” the Pentagon announced Saturday. The brigade is a U.S. Army infantry unit that uses Stryker armored vehicles to fight in urban areas. 

The new troops will be arriving along the Mexican border over the coming weeks, and will continue to cut down illegal crossings, which have plummeted since President Trump took office. 

“The Invasion of our Country is Over,” Trump declared Saturday on his Truth Social. “Anyone who tries to illegally enter the U.S.A. will face significant criminal penalties and immediate deportation.”  

February saw the lowest number of people apprehended at the southern US border in recorded history — 8,326, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

And that number is down significantly from just a month ago, when 61,465 people were caught at the border in January, and down a staggering 95% from February of last year, when 189,913 migrants were caught.

“The world is hearing our message: do not come to our country illegally. If you do, we will find you, arrest you, and send you back,” Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem wrote Saturday on X.

Some 9,200 U.S. troops are already stationed at the southern border, with over 4,000 deployed under federal orders as well as 5,000 National Guard troops sent by the governors.

Trump has been relying on the military to fulfill his campaign promises of closing the border and returning any migrants who try entering illegally to their home countries.

Military personnel have been sent to the border almost continuously since the 1990s to help address migration, drug trafficking and transnational crime.