‘We Will Defend This Line’: Pete Hegseth Visits Troops at Southern Border in First Trip as Defense Secretary

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday visited the southern border on his first trip as defense secretary.

“Border security is national security. Guys and gals of my generation have spent decades in foreign countries, guarding other people’s borders. It’s about time we secure our own border,” said Hegseth, a combat veteran who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

He added, “Tens of millions of people have poured across this border under Joe Biden’s administration, unchecked. We have no idea who they are. We have no idea where they’re coming from. We have no idea what their intentions are. In many ways, under the Biden administration, and Tom knows this better than anybody else. They were facilitated their entry into this country. That stops now under President and the Defense Department is proud to be a part of it. We have defended other places and other spaces. We will defend this line.”

Hegseth said he got a briefing from U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command leaders.

He also said he met with the “outstanding warriors of @jtf_north and agents of @CBP charged with gaining operational control over our southern border and executing their ‘Defending the Homeland’ motto.”

He added:

He was accompanied on the trip by border czar Tom Homan.

On his first day as president, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and directed via executive order for the DOD to take all appropriate action to support the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining complete operational control of the border.

The EO states:

The Secretary of Defense shall further take all appropriate action to facilitate the operational needs of the Secretary of Homeland Security along the southern border, including through the provision of appropriate detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services in support of civilian-controlled law enforcement operations.

Sec. 2.  Additional Physical Barriers.  The Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security shall immediately take all appropriate action, consistent with law, including 10 U.S.C. 2214, to construct additional physical barriers along the southern border.  To the extent possible, the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security shall coordinate with any Governor of a State that is willing to assist with the deployment of any physical infrastructure to improve operational security at the southern border.

Since then, the Pentagon has sent approximately 1,600 active duty troops to the border, to augment the 2,500 active duty troops who were already there — a 60-percent increase to more than 4,000 active duty troops — as well as additional air and intelligence assets.

The troops are placing physical barriers, conducting surveillance, and providing aircraft for flights operated by the Department of Homeland Security, to deport more than 5,000 individuals detained by Customs and Border Patrol in San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas, including two C-130 Hercules, two C-17 Globemaster aircraft and two Army UH-72 Lakota military helicopters. State leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, have also sent additional National Guard forces and aircraft.

Trump has also ordered via executive order that criminal migrants be detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Hegseth said during a recent interview on the Will Cain Show that Naval Station Guantanamo Bay is the “perfect place” to safely detain them.

“This is not the camps,” said Hegseth, who served there in 2004 to 2005 as an Army National Guard member. “This is a temporary transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where we can plus-up thousands — and tens of thousands, if necessary — to humanely move illegals out of our country where they do not belong [and] back to the countries where they came from in proper process.”

“President Trump is dead serious about getting illegal criminals out of our country,” he said. “And the DOD is not only willing to — it’s proud to — partner with DHS to defend the sovereignty of our southern border and advance that mission.”

He expanded on the plan during his visit to the border Monday.

“Any assets necessary at the Defense Department to support the expulsion and detention of those in our country illegally are on the table, to include, as we’ve been widely reported, Guantanamo Bay, a naval station I spent a year at as a guard back in 2004, 2005,” he said.

“I know that terrain very well. It’s the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country through gray tails or other assets, but also hardened criminals,” he said.

“We’re going to put Tren de Aragua [there] before you send them all the way back. How about a maximum security prison at Guantanamo Bay, where we have the space. So where we have the assets that can support those doing the interdiction, intervention and arrest, we will provide that because, as Tom said, border security is national security, and that includes assets that only Defense Department has.”

Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on ”X”, Truth Social, or on Facebook. 

Breitbart