X

Impact of Border Deployments Is Felt by Troops at Home and Away

Soldiers last month at Base Camp Donna in Texas. The deployment of 5,900 to the border was to end Dec. 15, but has been extended through January. Credit: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Instead of preparing for a coming deployment to Europe, soldiers with the First Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Tex., are checking IDs at the base’s entrance gates, filling in for troops who have been sent to the southwest border.

Nearby, a medical company is not getting ready for its overseas deployment, either; the soldiers are instead building aid stations in southwestern Texas.

And in Nogales, Ariz., public affairs officers who are supposed to be heading to Poland, Romania and Germany in April have spent the last month not studying the internecine rivalries that govern the former Soviet bloc, but fielding telephone calls from “The Daily Show” and other media asking if border troops are playing cards all day.

View the complete December 24 article by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Helene Cooper on The New York Times website here.

Data and Research Manager: