Several publications visited the military service members Trump has deployed to the border and I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that they're mostly twiddling their thumbs in tents.
The Washington Post visited a site in Texas where Army units were building a camp in the cold mud and setting up tents with no heat.
After a night of rain and temperatures plummeting below 50 degrees, the open field they were living in — land provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection — had turned into a gusty, mucky mess with the consistency of peanut butter.
The raw weather was the latest surprise for soldiers in a mission whose wheels shifted into motion amid President Trump’s election-season warnings that an “invasion” of migrants — many of them actually women and children — was heading north for the United States. [...]
Capt. Lauren Blanton, an engineer officer stationed at Fort Knox, Ky., said she arrived in Donna more than a week ago with three other soldiers and found an open field. As “camp mayor,” she has since overseen the installation of a trailer with 16 shower stalls, tents for a facility meeting day-to-day medical needs, and a single, massive tent that typically is used as a cafeteria for troops. However, given the number of soldiers coming through Donna, Army officials instead turned the large tent — the only one with heat in the camp — into living quarters for more soldiers.
I know it's Texas, but even Texas gets cold in the winter and winter is coming.
Meanwhile, the New York Times found soldiers eating MREs just a few miles away from a burger joint.
Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Micek, a platoon sergeant with the 89th Military Police Brigade, tore open the brown packaging of his M.R.E. on Thursday.
It was a chicken and noodle dish, one of the more sought-after rations because it came with Skittles. But from the cot outside his platoon’s tent at the Army’s latest forward operating base, Sergeant Micek could almost see the bright orange and white roof of Whataburger, a fast-food utopia eight miles away but off limits under current Army rules. The desert tan flatbed trucks at the base are for hauling concertina wire, not food runs.
Buzzfeed News has also taken a closer look at what Trump's border troops are actually doing.
The deployment includes no ground combat units. The troops are not allowed to detain or arrest anybody at the border. They are barred from enforcing immigration or criminal law. There is no indication that troops will be manning border checkpoints. Of the 39 units dispatched, only seven are military police units. The rest are trained to do engineering work and provide logistical support or medical assistance.
Five of the units are made up of public affairs specialists, combat photographers, and media support staff — troops assigned to provide photos and news releases about what the other units are doing. As of Saturday afternoon, the Defense Department’s media site had posted more than 350 photos and videos showing the troops’ deployment and arrival in Texas and Arizona.
While all of this is taking place, the migrant caravan is still over 1,000 miles away and they're not even heading in the direction of Texas or Arizona.
The caravan, which is already outnumbered by the number of troops deployed to the border, is marching toward Tijuana where they plan to apply for asylum at the border of Southern California.
Moreover, the caravan may not even reach their destination until late December or January and by that time their numbers will have dwindled.
These troops could spend their Thanksgiving (and possibly Christmas) eating MREs in the mud 1,000 miles away from the eventual destination of the supposed "invasion" they were ostensibly deployed to stop.