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Cover Photo: A U.S. Coast Guard HC-130J, arrives to transfer custody of illegal aliens to U.S Border Patrol at Biggs Army Airfield, Fort Bliss, Texas, Feb 2, 2025. Under the direction of U.S. Northern Command, U.S. Transportation Command is supporting Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flights by providing military airlift. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Jackson Gray)
Source: U.S. Northern Command
Photos: Courtesy
U.S. Northern Command Announces Joint Task Force Headquarters, intelligence support
Feb. 4, 2025
PETERSON Space Force Base, Colo. – U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) announces elements of Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 10th Mountain Division, from Fort Drum, N.Y., are assigned to USNORTHCOM to support the southern border mission. The unit will constitute a Joint Task Force Headquarters. Approximately 500 servicemembers from the 10th Mountain Division will support this mission, at a location to be named.
Additionally, approximately 140 intelligence personnel from the Joint Force have been assigned to USNORTHCOM as part of the mission to bolster security at the United States southern border. These intelligence personnel will provide full motion video analysis, counter network analysis, and Spanish language translation to the U.S. Border Patrol Office of Intelligence.
Finally, USNORTHCOM has stood up a Joint Intelligence Task Force-Southern Border to integrate and deconflict intelligence planning and threat analysis to support USNORTHCOM’s effective employment of the Joint Force in protecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the United States.
Following President Trump’s Executive Order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the Department of Defense continues to, along with Customs and Border Protection, fill critical capability gaps, such as ground-based detection and monitoring, information analysis, transportation, and supply chain support.
The exact number of personnel will fluctuate as units rotate personnel and as additional forces are tasked to deploy once planning efforts are finalized. Specific units will be announced as soon as more information is made available.
First Flight of Illegal Aliens Arrives at Guantanamo
Feb. 5, 2025 | By C. Todd Lopez
The first flight of high-threat illegal aliens out of the United States arrived at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, today.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, all 10 of those illegal aliens are part of the transnational criminal organization “Tren de Aragua.” Last month, the White House designated that group as a foreign terrorist organization.
“Their campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious and similarly threaten the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere,” the White House executive order reads.
At Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, the 10 high-threat illegal aliens who arrived today are being housed in vacant detention facilities. They are not being held alongside war on terror detainees who also reside at the installation.
Late last month, the White House announced in a memorandum for the defense secretary and the secretary of Homeland Security that facilities at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay should be used to house high-threat illegal aliens as they are moved from the United States back to their countries of origin.
“I hereby direct and to take all appropriate actions to expand the migrant operations center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States,” the memorandum said.
Many of the criminal illegal aliens being deported from the U.S. are traveling directly to their countries of origin via U.S. military aircraft. The use of military aircraft, or “gray tails” for that purpose, is new, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
In some cases, Hegseth said, where it may take longer to reach agreements or process those individuals’ return to their nations of origin, DOD needs a place to house them before they return home.
“We want somewhere else to hold them safely in the interim — criminal illegals — Guantanamo Bay … is a perfect place,” Hegseth said last week during an interview. He also noted that he served at that installation from 2004 to 2005.
“It’s folks who may be in transit to their home country or a safe, third harbor country, and it’s taking a little time to move with that processing and with the paperwork,” he said. “Better they be held at a safe location like Guantanamo Bay.”
Hegseth said the use of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay as a waypoint for moving high-threat illegal aliens is a “plan in movement.”
“We’re ramping up for the possibility to expand mass deportations because President Trump is dead serious about getting illegal criminals out of our country,” he said. “And the DOD is not only willing to is proud to partner with DHS to defend the sovereignty of our southern border and advance that mission.”
