100 US troops are already en route to the border.
A senior Marine official I spoke to said:The 500 Marines being sent from being on stand by to help with the California fires will be armed and have magazines in their weapons, unlike during past border missions.
The Marines are planning for up to 2500 Marines being sent to the border if requested.
The Marines, I am told, are treating this deployment as they would any other emergency contingency (evacuating an Embassy, deploying to a war zone).
“Our response will be immediate. We are going in ready to respond. If the cartels shoot at us we will not stand by,” this Marine official told me. "We will be taking whatever equipment we would send if a Marine Expeditionary Unit or MEU were deploying overseas."
