the situation room. breaking this hour president biden and the united states making good on their vow to strike back after three american soldiers were killed in jordan. the white house revealing moments ago strikes on three facilities and iraq and four in syria were successful. our correspondents are standing by as our live coverage continues right now. let s get straight to natasha ber trnd at the pentagon. what more are we learning about these strikes? reporter: we are getting more information in from the national security council as well as a senior official at the pentagon joint chiefs. we re told the reason why there was kind of a delay here in conducting these 85 different strikes across these facilities, these seven different facilities in iraq and syria is essentially they were waiting for good weather to present itself. and that window kind of opened today and it all came together so they would avoid, of course, unnecessary casualties according to the military o
also tonight the pentagon approveathize deployment of some 1,500 u.s. troops to the southern border with mexico as the u.s. braces for a new surge of thousands of migrants. the pentagon press secretary joins us live to discuss the timing and the scope of this new military mission. and senators clash over a proposed code of ethics for the u.s. supreme court justices at a hearing prompted by scrutiny of justice clarence thomas. i ll speak with chairman dick durbin who s accusing the high court of being in his word oblivious to these ethics issues. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer and you re in the situation room. we begin with two very consequential deadlines for the biden administration and the country, for that matter. the u.s. facing the dire possibility of defaulting on its debt next month, and a major migrant surge across the southern border is expected next week when a key trump era immigration policy expires. our
cnn s natasha ber trnd at the pentagon for us. what do we know, first of all, about these troops, what they ll be doing and just when they ll arrive at the u.s.-mexico border. we re learning today the administration in anticipation of that title 42 covid era pandemic law is preparing to send 1,500 additional active duty troop tuesday the southern border in order to augment the efforts there of the 2,500 u.s. troops that have been stationed there over the last year as well as the department of homeland security. now, it is important to note that these troops are not going to be performing a law enforcement function. they are primarily going to be doing administrative tasks. they will largely be behind desks, according to u.s. officials. they are going to be doing things like data entry, warehouse support, things that will essentially free up resources so that customs and border patrol agents can be out in the field and performing their law enforcement functions. now, according to the
will be on the border as early as may 10th just one day before that pandemic law expires, which will then allow a law that had allowed, of course, the administration to expel migrants coming across the border much more quickly. now, the administration has said they do expect as soon as that order expires, they expect thousands more migrants to try and cross the border. so this is really in preparation for that. it is not unprecedented, but, again, it underscores the preparation the administration is taking. thank you very much. let s discuss what s going on with the pentagon press secretary brigadier general patrick rider. thank you so much for joining us. how will these u.s. military personnel, these troops fit into the overall effort to prepare for a possible surge of migrants and asylum seekers the end of what s called title 42? first of all, wolf, thanks very hutch for having me today. as natasha highlights these
1,500 active duty troops are going to be going to support the department of homeland security to meet their request to help fill critical capability gaps to enable them to focus on the law enforcement activities that they do so well. and so these active duty forces will be focused on things, again, as natasha highlighted, detection and monitoring. they will be doing data entry, warehouse support. and it s important also to highlight that as this process plays out, we re continuing to evaluate options by which we could replace these active duty forces in stride. for example, potentially with reserve component forces or contracted support. but it was important to be able to meet dhs urgent request. senator austin authorized the temporary deployment up to 90 days for these forces to go there and, again, meet these critical capability gaps.