ALPINE — On Friday morning, officials from the Department of Defense (DOD) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hosted a press conference in Alpine to field questions from local media outlets about the military deployment underway in the region. Since March 13, over 200 troops have put boots on the ground in the tri-county area, with plans for up to 500 to join over the next few weeks, officials said.
The American forces will be mirrored by a deployment from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who promised 10,000 active duty troops along her country’s northern border. Five hundred of those arrived in the Ojinaga area in February, said Mexican Consul Gamaliel Bustillos Muñoz.
Maj. Jared Stefani, who is leading the battalion coming to the Big Bend, explained that American troops will be involved in “enhanced surveillance and detection,” and will not be responsible for arresting and detaining folks suspected of breaking immigration law. “We are committed to providing the necessary support to ensure the security of our nation’s border and provide world-class support to the Big Bend Sector Border Patrol, who is the lead agency in this operation,” he said.
Troops are coming from Fort Carson, Colorado, and are a part of the Joint Task Force Southern Border mission, headquartered in Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
For last week’s issue, The Big Bend Sentinel reported on tentative plans to house soldiers at large encampments at the Marfa and Presidio airports. Those plans have not yet been set in stone, said Lt. Col. Sarah J. Ray, the 10th Mountain Division’s chief of public affairs, with officials set to make a final decision about where troops will be stationed in the coming weeks.
During the question and answer period of the conference, The Sentinel asked the gathered representatives about policies related to the use of deadly force, referencing the killing of Presidio High School senior Esequiel Hernandez, Jr. by a Marine on line watch with Joint Task Force 6 in 1997. “With our standard rules for the use of force, soldiers do have the right to defend themselves,” Stefani explained.
Stefani hadn’t been familiar with Hernandez’s story before arriving in the area, but had been prompted to learn more and reach out to family members by Presidio County Judge Joe Portillo. “[His story] touched me in two different ways,” Stefani said. “The first is as a father, thinking about how that would impact a family and have lasting impacts on the community. The second one is as a commissioned officer out there making sure that every soldier is performing the functions they are required to do based on the standard rules for use of force.”
Lloyd Easterling, the Big Bend Sector’s new chief patrol agent, said that the CBP and DOD’s joint strategy under the Trump administration is much different from what the Big Bend region saw in the ‘90s. Rather than having military personnel in ghillie suits staking out the river, this deployment will be highly visible, with some units patrolling the area in large Stryker vehicles. “Nobody’s going to be hidden, everything will be in plain sight,” he said. “We want people to see where [the troops] are — it’s a method of deterrence.”
DOD representatives told the gathered reporters that they hope that this visibility will extend into soldiers’ time off, too — they’ll be free to unwind at local restaurants and businesses. Major Stefani said that members of his battalion have also expressed an interest in exploring area parks and volunteering in the community.
How large of an economic and social impact these soldiers have on the Big Bend remains to be seen, but historically speaking, the histories of the US military and Presidio County are tightly entwined, starting with a deployment of one hundred cavalrymen to Marfa in 1911. “None of those men knew that they were founding a military post that would be here for the next thirty-five years and would eventually become Fort D.A. Russell. They could never have imagined that a hundred years later that post would be an internationally-known art center, [the Chinati Foundation]” historian Lonn Taylor wrote in an address marking the encampment’s centennial. “Those troopers and their officers regarded Camp Marfa, as they called it, as their temporary home and supply base while they patrolled the Texas side of the Rio Grande.”
Even this publication has its roots in military operations along the border — before it was the paper of record for Presidio County, the Big Bend Sentinel was the cavalry post newsletter.
Like any period of massive change, locals have been hesitant to trust. Over the weekend, images of the Strykers headed to Presidio started circulating on social media. The reaction among tri-county residents was overwhelmingly negative, with many questioning why such a large number of support troops had been sent to the historically least-busy Border Patrol sector experiencing what could turn out to be its lowest traffic since the 1960s.
Chief Patrol Agent Easterling explained that the low numbers don’t automatically mean that the mission has been accomplished — he said that the Trump administration regards success as zero crossings and “full operational control of the border.”
On Wednesday morning, DOD and CBP officials teamed up with Presidio ISD Police Chief Joel Nuñez to do some public outreach and education at Presidio Elementary School. Nuñez had been receiving calls from community members about the Strykers and wanted to dispel some rumors and misconceptions. “These vehicles arrived yesterday and they wanted to let the students see them before being sent out into the field since these vehicles will not be seen in town that often,” he told The Sentinel, explaining that — for the most part — Army personnel will be driving standard unmarked vehicles to get around in city limits.
During Wednesday’s Commissioners Court meeting, both Precinct 1 Commissioner Deirdre Hisler and Precinct 4 Commissioner David Beebe spoke highly of Maj. Stefani and his crew. “He’s the kind of guy I think you can trust,” Beebe said. “I’m not worried about the leadership of this group.”
Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) — a border watchdog and advocacy group with a branch in Presidio — still fears for the safety of local residents. Despite the DOD’s insistence otherwise, he believes that this deployment is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from enforcing civilian law. “In that sense, we believe that this deployment is breaking the limits of the Constitution,” he said.
At Friday’s press conference, DOD staff preemptively countered this concern by saying that the deployment was within the bounds of the Posse Comitatus Act because the surveillance support roles carried out by deployed troops will free up Border Patrol to conduct field work and make arrests. Garcia isn’t convinced by this logic — given that folks detected by the military and flagged for arrest by Border Patrol could be detained by these undeputized troops.
In the fall of 2024, BNHR and the Texas Civil Rights Project released a report on “troublesome patterns of abuse” the group alleges were carried out by members of the National Guard deployed to the border in places like Eagle Pass, where CBP and the DOD have been working together for years. He insists that — while the Border Patrol’s record isn’t perfect, in his organization’s view — they are better equipped through training and acclimation to border communities to enforce the law.
On May 3, the group will host a peaceful demonstration in El Paso to demonstrate that the effects of these alleged abuses could have far-reaching effects. “Even people in the interior should be concerned about this,” he said. “They are setting up a precedent — this could happen other places in the United States.”