Soldiers from the Kentucky-based 19th Engineer Battalion install barbed-wire fences on the banks of the Rio Grande on Nov. 18, 2018. | Thomas Watkins/AFP/Getty Images immigration Military backpedals on winding down border mission

The military backpedaled Tuesday on the declaration by the general overseeing the deployment to the U.S.-Mexico border that some of his 5,800 troops would begin heading home in the coming days.

“No specific timeline for redeployment has been determined,” a spokesman for the Army component of U.S. Northern Command said in an emailed statement. “We will provide more details as they become available.”


Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, who is overseeing the controversial deployment of active-duty troops to shore up border entry points, told POLITICO in an interview Monday that he expected to send the first wave of troops home later this week after they completed stringing concertina wire and building base camps.

“You’re going to see a couple of things over the next week — some redeployments,” said Buchanan, who heads the Army component and leads the active-duty border mission that President Donald Trump ordered. He cited “excess capacity” of engineers and logistics troops.

“By Christmas, it should be all,” Buchanan added. “Our end date right now is 15 December, and I’ve got no indications from anybody that we’ll go beyond that.”

But Tuesday, Buchanan’s headquarters cast that timeline in doubt, emphasizing instead that some troops will be shifted from Texas to California as the caravans of northward-bound migrants through Mexico shift direction.

“We may shift some forces to other areas of the border to engineering support missions in California and other areas,” the statement said. Migrants on Monday forced the partial closure of a main entry point.

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In the interview, Buchanan said that “the actual behavior of the caravans is more and more headed toward Tijuana, so while I’ve got to keep some forces in Texas, I’ve now shifted my main effort to California."

But the general’s assertion Monday that the mission was winding down — and that some troops would be coming home as early as this week — prompted renewed criticism from leading critics of Trump's snap decision to send the troops to the border before the election.

The brief statement from U.S. Army North on Tuesday, however, stated in full: "We are continually assessing our resources and refining requirements in close coordination with the Department of Homeland Security. We may shift some forces to other areas of the border to engineering support missions in California and other areas. No specific timeline for redeployment has been determined. We will provide more details as they become available."