President Trump, it seems, is serious about defending the U.S. border with Mexico as the migrant invasion force tramping through Mexico inches closer.

According to the Washington Post and other media, the president will send more than 5,000 troops to the border by week’s end.

The operation is called Faithful Patriot, and the soldiers who are participating will, news reports say, fortify the border to protect the country.

Who’s Going

“Senior U.S. officials said Monday that more than 5,200 additional U.S. troops will deploy to the border with Mexico by the end of the week,” the Post reported, and the deployments are underway.

Air Force General Terrence O’Shaughnessy, the chief of U.S. Northern Command, said the troops will “focus first on hardening the border in Texas, followed by Arizona and California,” as the Post put it:

The deployments will include three combat engineer battalions, members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and troops who specialize in aviation, medical treatment and logistics, O’Shaughnessy said. He highlighted the deployment of helicopters, which will deploy with night-vision capabilities and sensors that will help CBP determine where they need to be.

“We’ll be able to spot and identify groups and rapidly deploy CBP personnel where they are needed,” he said.

O’Shaughnessy said that the Pentagon also will deploy military police units and cargo aircraft, including three C-130s and one C-17. Combined command posts will be established to integrate U.S. military and CBP efforts.

As The New American reported last week, 800 were on the way to reinforce the 2,092 National Guardsmen from four states who were already there.

Those 800 are “coming from Fort Campbell. They’re coming from Fort Knox,” O’Shaughnessy said, the Post reported. “They’re moving closer to the border. They’re going to continue their training, and they’re ready to deploy to actually be employed on the border.”

But that’s not all: “The Pentagon already has sent 22 miles of concertina wire to the border, and has enough additional wire to cover 150 miles, he said.”

The Associated Press reported that the Pentagon is deploying jersey barriers to the border.

Lawsuits Planned to Back Migrant Border Attack

Trump will announce his plan to protect the border tomorrow, but as the Post suggested, anti-American, open borders leftist groups such as the American Civil Liberties will wage legal war to stop him.

The president has the authority to close the border to protect the country, federal prosecutors say. But the Left plans to challenge that authority by claiming it does not extend to applicants for asylum. By filing lawsuits contesting Trump’s power to restrict asylum claims, the Left hopes to tie up the administration in court and block deportations.

The ACLU’s tweet on the troop deployment, for instance, flatly states: “Many arriving have a right to seek asylum.” Take that as a warning that lawsuits are coming.

That the migrant horde is mostly those fleeing persecution is the false narrative the Left has been pushing to manufacture sympathy for unemployed illegal aliens who simply decided to move to the United States to look for work.

The Post and AP, as The New American reported, have quoted multiple “migrants” who said they are unemployed and are coming here to work. News reports have not provided evidence that those who claimed they had fled persecution had actually done so.

For their part, the migrants say they will march until they reach the border. They turned down an offer of asylum and jobs from outgoing Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who announced a “You Are Home” plan that, AP reported, offered “shelter, medical attention, schooling and jobs to Central Americans in Chiapas and Oaxaca states if migrants apply, calling it a first step toward permanent refugee status.”

Some 1,700 of those in the caravan, which has dwindled from a high of 14,000 last week to less than 4,000 now, applied for asylum.

So far, nothing has stood it their way. The invaders smashed through borders in Guatemala and Mexico, where police simply watched as they marched in.

Whether the teeming horde, still about 1,000 miles and two weeks away, will attempt to storm the U.S. border is unknown.

The big question is what the American GIs will do if that happens.

Photo taken on U.S. side of border in El Paso, Texas: Chris Kolenc/iStock/Getty Images Plus