USS Gravely warship deployed to southern border in line with Trump order

A U.S. Navy destroyer was deployed to the southern border over the weekend to help with the Trump administration’s maritime efforts to halt illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

USS Gravely, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, departed Naval Weapons Station Yorktown in Virginia for a scheduled deployment to the U.S.-Mexico border to carry out President Donald Trump’s southern border executive orders, Navy officials said in a statement on Saturday.

“Gravely’s sea-going capacity improves our ability to protect the United States’ territorial integrity, sovereignty, and security,” said Gen. Gregory Guillot of U.S. Northern Command.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, Joint Staff director for operations, told reporters Monday that USS Gravely will go to the Gulf of America to carry out missions to intercept drug smugglers at sea.

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Navy officials said the deployment highlights the Pentagon’s dedication to “combating maritime related terrorism, weapons proliferation, transnational crime, piracy, environmental destruction, and illegal seaborne immigration.”

USS Gravely, which has previously been deployed to the Red Sea to intercept missiles that the Iranian-backed Houthis fired at commercial vessels, will enhance “maritime efforts” and “fill critical capabilities gaps” in support of the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, officials said.

“This is an important step in the whole-of-government efforts to seal the southern border and maintain U.S. sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Guillot said. 

“It’s not only vital for the United States to have control of our border via land,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters Monday. “It’s equally important to control our territorial waters, and this deployment directly supports U.S. Northern Command’s mission to protect our sovereignty.” 

A Coast Guard captain told Fox News Digital earlier this month that there were about 200 migrant boat encounters near the San Diego coast over the previous 90 days, attributing the uptick to the Trump administration’s increase in land border security.

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“They’re locking down the land border pretty good… where they used to get thousands a day. Now, they’re now down in the hundreds a day,” Coast Guard District 11 Capt. Jason Hagen said. “So, the migrants have to go somewhere. The smugglers have to move their operations somewhere. And we’re starting to see an uptick in the maritime environment.”

Hagen said those encountered aboard migrant boats include foreign nationals from U.S. adversary countries.

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“We’re starting to see an uptick in other nationalities, as well, which is a… national security concern because it’s not just your economic Mexicans looking to come to the United States for work,” Hagen said. “It’s also… bad actors coming from other countries. We’ve seen nationalities to include Chinese, Russian, Uzbekistan[i], Pakistan[i]. It’s really all over the place.”

Fox News Digital’s Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.