The US Coast Guard has deployed its elite forces to Florida, Alaska and Hawaii after Donald Trump signed executive orders aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration on his second day in office.
Hours after Trump declared illegal immigration a national emergency and announced plans to send the military to the U.S. border with Mexico, the Coast Guard revealed a six-point plan to combat crime at sea .
In a statement, Acting Coast Guard Commander Kevin Monday said the strategy would focus on stopping “illegal migration, drug trafficking and other terrorist or hostile activities before they reach our border.
This includes increasing the number of “specialist forces” units – a branch that focuses on combating terrorism and serious crime – on patrol.
Boats and planes will circle the southeastern US border near Florida to crack down on mass immigration from Haiti and Cuba, the statement said.
Forces will also be sent to the waters around Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The announcement came on the same day that the Trump administration began a shake-up of the Department of Homeland Security, which included the firing of Coast Guard Commander Adm. Linda Fagan, the first female head of the armed forces in position since 2022.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamin Huffman said Fagan was relieved of her duties after a “long and illustrious career.”
Trump outlined his plan to increase security at the southern border in a series of executive orders that began taking effect shortly after his inauguration on Monday.
That included reviving priorities from his first term as president that had been rolled back by Joe Biden, including forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico and completing the border wall.
Other executive orders included new strategies, such as an effort to end automatic citizenship for children of migrants who are in the United States illegally or on temporary visas.
A Biden-era app used by nearly a million migrants to enter America was also shut down.
