Trump pitches a higher number of border troops

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump says he may send up to 15,000 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, doubling the number the Pentagon planned to send. “We’ll go up to anywhere between 10,000 and 15,000 military personnel on top of Border Patrol, ICE, and everybody else at the border,” Trump said Wednesday to reporters as he left the White House for a campaign rally in Florida. The Pentagon said more than 7,000 troops were being sent to the border to reinforce Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen. The projected number grew this week: Officials originally planned to deploy about 800 to 1,000 soldiers, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis raised the number to 5,200 on Monday. The president’s latest announcement seemed to catch the Pentagon by surprise, with some officials saying they had no plans for a 15,000-strong deployment, which would dwarf the number of migrants estimated to be traveling toward the U.S. border in a caravan.

The closest caravan is thought to have about 4,000 people—down from its peak of 7,000—and is nearly 1,000 miles away from the closest U.S. border crossing. Mexican authorities said more than 2,000 migrants applied for asylum in that country already. Smaller groups of about 1,000 people are farther away. The Mexican government on Wednesday refused the migrants’ request for bus transportation from the city of Juchitan. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders praised Mexico’s decision in a press conference: “They have helped stop a lot of the transportation means of these individuals in these caravans, forcing them [to walk].”

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that a Guatemalan woman on Wednesday gave birth to the first known caravan baby in Juchitan. Authorities arranged for the healthy baby girl to be born in a hospital.