President Donald Trump's shock order to send National Guard troops to the frontier with Mexico Wednesday came after data showed that illegal immigration has sharply rebounded following a plunge in his first year in office.

Data on border apprehension for March released late Wednesday indicates undocumented immigrants are pouring into the country at the highest level in four years.

Trump's warning of a crackdown when he entered the White House in January 2017 drove the number of apprehensions of illegal border crossers -- an indicator of total crossing numbers -- to four-decade lows.

For example, apprehensions in February 2017 were 23,555, down from more than 38,000 a year earlier. And they hit a monthly low of 15,766 in April 2017, less than one-third of the previous year's number.

At the time anti-immigration groups celebrated that as the "Trump Effect" and Trump held it up as his great success.

"Jobs are returning, illegal immigration is plummeting, law, order and justice are being restored. We are truly making America great again!" he tweeted that April.

A year later, the data suggests that the Trump Effect lasted barely seven months and that undocumented immigrants are entering the country at a rate similar to 2014-2016, before he launched his run for president on an anti-immigration platform.

Apprehensions on the southwest border in January and February totaled 72,517, compared to 66,018 a year earlier.

Numbers for March released Wednesday soared: 50,308 people were apprehended, the highest level for March since 2014. A year ago, only 16,588 people were nabbed sneaking into the United States from Mexico.

That surge, officials say, directly correlates to a similar rise in the number of people successfully entering the country without documents.

Despite boosting border staffing and spending and giving border patrol officers more power, said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, "we have recently seen the numbers of illegal border crossings rise from 40-year-lows last April back to previous levels."

Nielsen said the rebound comes as human smugglers encourage migrants to take advantage of their knowledge of US laws to avoid quick deportation.

For example, the Homeland Security Department said that one out of ten people being apprehended by Customs and Border Protection officers asks for asylum based on fear for their lives in dangerous countries like Honduras -- compared to one out of 100 in 2013.

Nielsen said that there has been a major jump in recent years in the number of families and unaccompanied children seeking to sneak across the border, and that now half of border crossers are from Central America.

"The traffickers and smugglers know that these individuals cannot, by law, be easily removed back to their country of origin."

Even so, recent CBP data shows a sharp decline overall from one year ago in unaccompanied children and families apprehended at the border, suggesting Trump policies have had some sustained impact.

"We will not allow previous illegal immigration levels to become the norm," Nielsen said.

Pentagon hustles to jump in line with Trump's border directive
Washington (AFP) April 4, 2018 - Pentagon planners scrambled Wednesday to find ways to support President Donald Trump's surprise edict that he would send "the military" to guard America's southern border.

The commander-in-chief's seemingly off-the-cuff directive blindsided officials Tuesday, when Trump said the military would guard the frontier until "we can have a wall and proper security."

It took hours for the White House to clarify that Trump's plan involved mobilizing the National Guard, and not active-duty troops, but Defense Department officials kept looking for other ways to bolster border security.

"There are a number of ways the Department of Defense is already supporting the (Department of Homeland Security) border security mission," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said late Tuesday.

"We are still in consultation with the White House about ways we can expand that support."

Legally, the Pentagon is limited in how it can help with regular troops on the border, as an 1878 act restricts how the federal government can deploy forces domestically.

The National Guard is different: each state has its own militia that can be called into action by the governor.

Federal authorities can, however, activate guardsmen to go overseas, such as during the Iraq War.

Since 2006, National Guard troops have been deployed three times along the border, most recently in 2014, when Texas's then governor Rick Perry sent his state's militia to boost security amid an influx of young immigrants from Central America.

The National Guard did not immediately respond to a request for comment on future deployments to the border.

The National Guard has recently been called to action in the wake of multiple natural disasters, and the militias are well known internationally for their involvement during civil rights protests in the 1950s and '60s, and their deployment to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

- Boots on the ground -

Syracuse University professor William Banks, who has written a book about the domestic role of the American military, said the Pentagon might find it simplest to offer support other than regular troops, such as logistical or intelligence support to the civilian agencies on the border.

"It would be extraordinary to have so-called boots on the ground involved in enforcing (immigration) laws," Banks told AFP.

"The president would need a legal authorization to carry out that mission. I doubt that he could get it."

The anti-immigration president has previously suggested the military could help fund and build a wall along the Mexican border, but Tuesday's remarks were the first time he proposed US troops to patrol the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) frontier.

Throughout his campaign and the first year of his presidency Trump insisted the wall project would somehow be paid for by Mexico -- an idea firmly rejected by the government there.

But Trump has had no success in trying to get $25 billion in funding for the wall from Congress, so he has turned to the Pentagon in the hope of poaching funds from its mammoth defense budget.

"Because of the $700 & $716 Billion Dollars gotten to rebuild our Military, many jobs are created and our Military is again rich," he recently tweeted.

As has repeatedly been the case since Trump's inauguration, Defense Department bureaucrats were caught flat-footed by the remarks.

Since coming into office, Trump has unexpectedly called for the banning of transgender troops, demanded a military parade and vowed to pull US forces out of Syria "soon," all with little or no apparent coordination with the Pentagon, where bureaucrats have struggled to bend policy to confirm with the president's wishes.

A US official told AFP the Pentagon had "no idea" what the ultimate border mission might look like.

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