Trump wants 20,000 troops to hunt, transport immigrants. Cost estimate: $3.6 billion | Homeland Security officials want the troops to help track fugitives, quell riots at detention centers and search for unaccompanied children in remote or hostile terrain

> The Pentagon is reviewing a Department of Homeland Security request to deploy more than 20,000 additional National Guard troops to aid the Trump administration’s widening crackdown on illegal immigration around the United States, according to officials and documents.

> Homeland Security officials want the troops to help track fugitives, quell riots at detention centers and search for unaccompanied children in remote or hostile terrain.

> Meanwhile, Pentagon and Customs and Border Patrol officials have inspected military bases in recent months from New Jersey to California as potential sites to detain an expected influx of migrants.

> The moves would shift the military from its mission of defending the nation against foreign enemies toward policing its streets, according to opponents such as Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

> On June 10, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth indicated the National Guard would soon take on a larger role in domestic security. **He told a House committee that the United States was entering a new “phase” in which the National Guard would “become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”**