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The Pentagon is sending about 3,000 more active-duty troops to the US-Mexico border as President Donald Trump seeks to clamp down on illegal immigration and fulfil a central promise of his campaign, US officials said Saturday. His defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has ordered elements of a Stryker brigade combat team and a general support aviation battalion for the mission, the Pentagon announced. The forces will arrive along the nearly 2,000-mile border in the coming weeks. The Defence Department's statement did not specify the size of the deployment, but it was put at about 3,000 by the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The Strykers are medium-armoured wheeled personnel carriers. Already, about 9,200 US troops in total are at the southern border, including 4,200 deployed under federal orders and about 5,000 National Guard troops under the control of governors. The new troops will reinforce and expand current bor
Mexico has sent drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a US DEA agent in 1985, to the United States with 28 prisoners requested by the US government, a Mexican government official and other sources confirmed Thursday. It comes as top Mexican officials are in Washington trying to head off the Trump administration's threat of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports next week. The official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, confirmed Caro Quintero's removal. Another person familiar with Mexico's actions also confirmed the removal on the condition of anonymity because they were unable to discuss sensitive diplomatic negotiations. Mexico's Attorney General's Office said in a statement that the 29 prisoners sent to the US Thursday faced charges related to drug trafficking among other crimes. Also among the list were two leaders of the Los Zetas cartel, Mexicans Miguel Trevio Morales and his brother Omar Trevio Morales
President Donald Trump says he plans to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting Tuesday, in addition to doubling the 10 per cent universal tariff charged on imports from China. Posting on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said that illicit drugs such as fentanyl are being smuggled into the United States at unacceptable levels" and that import taxes would force other countries to crackdown on the trafficking. We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled, the Republican president wrote. China will likewise be charged an additional 10 per cent Tariff on that date. The prospect of escalating tariffs has already thrown the global economy into turmoil with consumers expressing fears about inflation worsening and the auto sector possibly suffering if America's two largest trading partners in Canada and Mexico ar
Mexico said Monday it's awaiting a new response from Google to its request that the tech company fully restore the name Gulf of Mexico to its Google Maps service before filing a lawsuit. President Claudia Sheinbaum shared a letter addressed to her government from Cris Turner, Google's vice president of government affairs and public policy. It says that Google will not change the policy it outlined after US President Donald Trump declared the body of water the Gulf of America. We will wait for Google's response and if not, we will proceed to court, Sheinbaum said Monday during a morning press briefing. As it stands, the gulf appears in Google Maps as Gulf of America within the United States, as Gulf of Mexico within Mexico and Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America) elsewhere. Turner in his letter said the company was using Gulf of America to follow "longstanding maps policies impartially and consistently across all regions" and that the company was willing to meet in person with the Mexica
For more than four centuries, the body of water stretching from Florida through Texas and into Mexico has been known as the Gulf of Mexico. But in a matter of weeks, President Donald Trump and White House officials have sought to rewrite the map by calling it the Gulf of America and insisting others do the same. It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Feb. 12. It's very important to this administration that we get that right, not just for people here at home, but also for the rest of the world. But Trump's effort to rewrite the map of the world is far more complicated than such comments suggest. Here's what goes into a name. Did Trump rename the Gulf of Mexico? Before his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump announced plans to change the Gulf of Mexico's name to the Gulf of America and signed an executive order to do so as soon as he was in office. Can he change the name on his own?
President Donald Trump said he is serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state in an interview that aired Sunday during the Super Bowl preshow. Yeah it is, Trump told Fox News Channel's Bret Baier when asked whether his talk of annexing Canada is a real thing" as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently suggested. I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. And I'm not going to let that happen," he said. "Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially a subsidy to Canada? The US is not subsidizing Canada. The US buys products from the natural resource-rich nation, including commodities like oil. While the trade gap in goods has ballooned in recent years to $72 billion in 2023, the deficit largely reflects America's imports of Canadian energy. Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off if it agreed to become the 51st US state a prospect that is deeply unpopular among ...
The Pentagon will deploy roughly 1,500 more active duty soldiers to the southern border to support President Donald Trump's expanding crackdown on immigration, a U.S. official said Friday. That would eventually bring the total to about 3,600 active duty troops at the border. The order has been approved, the official said, to send a logistics brigade from the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty in North Carolina. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the deployment has not yet been publicly announced. The Pentagon has been scrambling to put in motion Trump's executive orders signed shortly after he took office on Jan. 20. The first group of 1,600 active duty troops has already deployed to the border, and close to 500 more soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division are expected to begin moving in the coming days. About 500 Marines also have been told to go to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some of the detained migrants will be held. Several hundred Marines have already arri
As soon as the sun glints over miles of border fence dividing the United States and Mexico, the engines of cargo trucks packed with auto and computer parts roar to life along border bridges and bleary-eyed workers file into factories to assemble a multitude of products geared toward the US market. For more than half a century, this daily rhythm has helped fuel the heartbeat of a transnational machine that generated more than $800 billion in trade between the US and Mexico in 2024 alone. Over the past year, however, President Donald Trump's threatened 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada have plunged manufacturing hubs all along the northern Mexican border into limbo, a state that persists despite a one-month reprieve to which Trump agreed on Monday. Tariffs would cripple Mexican border economies that are reliant on factories churning out products for the US auto parts, medical supplies, computer components, myriad electronics and likely thrust the country into a recession, econom
A line of Mexican National Guard and Army trucks rumbled along the border separating Ciudad Jurez and El Paso, Texas Wednesday, among the first of 10,000 officers Mexico has sent to its northern frontier following tariff threats by President Donald Trump. Masked and armed National Guard members picked through brush running along the border barrier on the outskirts of Ciudad Jurez, pulling out makeshift ladders and ropes tucked away in the trenches, and pulling them onto trucks. Patrols were also seen on other parts of the border near Tijuana. It comes after a turbulent week along the border after Trump announced he would delay imposing crippling tariffs on Mexico for at least a month. In exchange, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum promised she would send the country's National Guard to reinforce the border and crack down on fentanyl smuggling. Trump has declared an emergency on the border despite migration levels and fentanyl overdoses significantly dipping over the part year. The
From an ice cream parlour in California to a medical supply business in North Carolina to a T-shirt vendor outside Detroit, U.S. businesses are bracing to take a hit from the taxes President Donald Trump imposed Saturday on imports from Canada, Mexico and China America's three biggest trading partners. The levies 25 per cent on Canadian and Mexican and 10 per cent on Chinese goods will take effect Tuesday. Canadian energy, including oil, natural gas and electricity, will be taxed at a lower 10 per cent rate. Mexico's president immediately ordered retaliatory tariffs and Canada's prime minister said the country would put matching 25% tariffs on up to USD 155 billion in US imports. China did not immediately respond to Trump's action. The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that Trump's tariffs would cost the average American household USD 1,000 to USD 1,200 in annual purchasing power. Gregory Daco, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm EY, calculates that the tariffs