President Joe Biden authorized the deployment of reserve troops to the southern border to combat “international drug trafficking” under the National Emergencies Act in an executive order signed April 27.
The executive order authorizes the secretaries of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD) to order to active duty reserve troops as they “consider necessary.”
“I am authorizing the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to order to active duty such units and individual members of the Ready Reserve under the jurisdiction of the Secretary concerned,” Biden wrote in a subsequent letter to Congress. “The authorities that have been invoked will ensure the Department of Defense can properly sustain its support of the Department of Homeland Security concerning international drug trafficking along the Southwest Border.”…