Warren, Hirono Press Defense Secretary Hegseth on Cost and Military Readiness Impact of Deploying Troops to Southern Border, Guantanamo Bay

“[DoD’s] new immigration operations — which the Trump administration is planning at an unprecedented scale — threaten to burden the Department’s resources and undermine our national security.”
Text of Letter (PDF)
Washington, D.C. –U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) wrote to Secretary of Defense (DoD) Pete Hegseth regarding the military’s recent deployment of active-duty forces to the southern border and Guantanamo, and the Department of Defense’s (DOD) new involvement in immigration detention and deportation.
On his first day in office, President Trump signed anExecutive Orderdirecting the United States Northern Command (NORTHCOM) to “seal the borders” and “to provide steady-state southern border security.” On January 29, President Trumpdirected DoDto “expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity” of 30,000. As a result, NORTHCOM has deployed about 2,000 active-duty troops to the southern border, bringing the total under DoD’s command to over 4,000. These deployments have drawn from numerous Army and Marine Corps units, and DoD hasrequiredthe 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, New York to oversee the units. In the near term, the Trump administration is reportedly considering deploying up to 10,000 troops to the southern border —double the scaleof DoD’s border deployment in 2019 and 2020. That number could grow; during President Trump’s first term, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Stephen Miller (now White House Deputy Chief of Staff) said that “[w]e need a quarter-million troops” at the southern border.
Following Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) reversal of its policy prohibiting the use of military aircraft to deport migrants, DoD hasoperatedover 10 deportation flights around the world. At Guantanamo, SOUTHCOM’s hasdeployed over500 Marines and DoD hasnot ruled outdetaining women and children there. A former Pentagon officialestimatesthat these operations would “quickly skyrocket into tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars.”
At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 13, 2025, Admiral Alvin Holsey, SOUTHCOM Commander, confirmed that the Pentagon does not have a cost estimate for these immigration operations, though the department is supposed to consider costs before deploying troops. At the same hearing, General Gregory Guillot, NORTHCOM Commander, told senators that only one training day has been set aside per week for deployed troops operating outside their specialties to maintain their skills, so troops are only doing 20% of relevant military training while deployed for immigration enforcement.
“[DoD’s] new immigration-related operations place significant — and unnecessary — burdens on DoD resources, personnel, and readiness,”wrote the senators.
The aircraft now used for deportations, for example, cost far more than the commercial and chartered flights that ICE normally uses for deportations. The new aircraft, the military C-17 plane,costs taxpayersover $28,000 per flight hour for a single deportation, compared to $8,577 per flight hour on civilian aircraft alternatives that ICE often uses. Similarly, ICE’s contract for Guantanamo’s migrant operations center requires it to pay a staggering $272,000per detention bed, compared to around $57,00 per bed at ICE facilities within the United States.
DoD may not have a realistic estimate of how much these new operations will cost. During President Trump’s first term, when DoD deployed troops to the border between FY2018 and FY2020, the Department estimated that its border operations would total $1 billion in unreimbursed costs. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) laterfound that“DOD did not present reliable cost estimates.” Since then, DoD has not implemented any of GAO’s recommendations for improving how it estimates the cost of assisting DHS’s immigration operations.
DoD’s growing participation in DHS immigration operations will pose serious costs for units’ readiness. The Defense Secretary discontinued part of DoD’s border operations between 2018 and 2020 after finding that “continued support for the mission would negatively affect military readiness and morale.” The commandant of the Marine Corpswarned at the time thatthe operation posed an “unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency,” as a result of separated units and canceled training exercises.
“Likewise, we are concerned about how these operations may impact servicemembers’ morale. In recent years, DoD personnel who deployed to the border have reported dangerously low morale, driven by an unclear mission, isolation, boredom, poor accommodations, and more,”wrote the lawmakers. “Poor morale even contributed to a series of suicides by members of the Texas National Guard who deployed to the southern border.”
“(T)he Trump administration is militarizing the country’s immigration enforcement system in an apparent attempt to signal toughness. But this political stunt will come at a high cost; it risks diverting DoD’s resources away from its vital mission in ways that compromise our national security,”the senators concluded.
The senators requested that DoD provide more clarity about troop deployment to the border and anticipated costs by February 27, 2025.
Senator Warren has sought to protect military resources and prevent unnecessary costs that compromise national security:
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