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A day after the midterm elections, the Pentagon said it would stop calling a military deployment on the border to stop a caravan of migrants “Operation Faithful Patriot,” according to a report on Wednesday.

Troops will now use the term “in support of Customs Border Protection” to refer to the nearly 8,000 active-duty military members stationed in the border states of Arizona, California and Texas, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The Pentagon did not provide any reasons for the name change but said it was decided by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ office on Election Day.

One reason, Pentagon officials said, was that the troop deployment isn’t an “operation” in the sense that it doesn’t involve combat and because it was undertaken in support of a government agency.

President Trump in the weeks leading up to the election seized on the groups of Central American migrants marching on foot to the US border as a campaign issue to fire up his base.

He referred to the thousands of migrants as an invasion, although they were hundreds of miles away, and claimed that “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” had mixed in with the groups without providing any evidence.

The Pentagon has already shot down suggestions the troop deployment was politically motivated and said the name was chosen by the US Northern Command.

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