arthel: secretary mattis told reporters the long-term mission has somewhat to be determined. for more, retired u.s. navy who also served as national security adviser to vice president dick cheney. always a pleasure to have you. how does or how is a tv mission interpreted by the 5900 at military personnel. those commission to carry out the mission. personnel are going to do their duty and mission. listen to a secretary of defense matters stated. the law enforcement mission as a homeland security mission. dod has a homeland defense mission. the united states government is on a hall of government approach. we needed to have this different skill set that are part of active duty military engineers to support the customs and border protection. the soldiers there in terms of the short-term mission are doing their particular task to support
southern texas, which is for commerce. we are trying to essentially strengthened the capabilities to support less access and protect those of the military mission inside of texas. the entire area between brownsville all the way to the west along the rio grande valley is very important with regard to supporting customs and border protection and enforcement along the large area. that s what the mission is going to achieve. i understand it s possible in a week to 10 days the troops will have accomplished the tasks that you mentioned. at that point will the president withdraw the troops. what s your take on that? general mattis is working with good command and particular down there at camp houston in texas. they re looking at the actual tasks that need to be achieved there with the actual troops.
i think so. the president announced 10,000 was the approximate true planning model. 5900 total support forces come the engineers, people that support statistics in particular to take care of the refueling responsibilities of the air and marine component of customs and border protection. if the mission lasts for months and because of the circumstance of the caravan or with the border security mission, that s part of service and i think those soldiers, all of them will be very proud to support that particular mission. you think 5900 is a good number. captain wallis can i thank you very much for your analysis. we ll talk to you again. great comic thank you, arthel. eric: a war of words between mike pence in the chinese president. how they are going back and forth could affect our trade relationship with china. the people of the united states are interested in the
so with those forces were rotated out that is a good thing. i think looking at understanding the terrain and the actual area in support of homeland security is an important part of how long troops will be there. the final point i wanted to make his back to mr. mattis, homeland defense mission as a mission of the department of defense and border security is national security as well. if the whole of government approach and whatever the defense department can do to support homeland security and custom border protection to serve the actual objective of securing the border is an important role for them to play. you mentioned having troops rotate out, which means you believe that there will be this presents a possibly 59,000 troops there for sometime to come. i ve got 30 to 40 seconds for you.
think accompanied children to one area of the border and try to pass their product through another area of the border. that s the dynamic that we are working with. also, we have agents that are spending exorbitant amount of time in the roles of processing and doing child care and food preparation where they should be focusing on the border security mission and keeping america safe and the citizens of their county and the country safe. ainsley: how do you stay safe? yesterday we saw reports that there were several agents that were injured because rocks were being thrown at them. when i was down there on the border, some of the agents were telling me that when you take the boats into the rio grand that people on the mexican side are throwing bricks at them. they are also tossing out fishing lines and trying to hook the agents u. yes. i mean, border patrol agents get extensive amount of training at our border patrol academy. it s very difficult. it s 117 day program. it s very scenario