National Guard to head to southern border but details unclear

NEW YORK (FOX5NY.COM) - Impatient over the lack of progress in funding and building a wall at the U.S. border with Mexico, President Donald Trump is beefing up the border with the National Guard.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen unveiled the preliminary plans Wednesday, saying the deployment will begin immediately but was unable to give specifics on the number of troops or how long they'll be there.

Both Presidents Obama and Bush deployed the National Guard to assist the U.S. Border Patrol. President Trump was expected to sign a proclamation Wednesday.

Nielsen said the troops will deploy to help the Border Patrol to "fill the gaps." She said the details of the plan are still being worked out but that DHS would coordinate with the governors of the border states to deploy National Guard units.

In the meantime, the White House announced that the U.S. involvement in Syria is coming to a rapid end. But the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops will remain there to complete the mission of defeating ISIS. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the goal is to defeat ISIS and when that happens, U.S. forces can turn over control to local troops.

That seemed to walk back the president's comments from a day earlier when he said, "But sometimes it's time to come back home, and we're thinking about that very seriously."

Also, the Washington Post reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller told President Trump's lawyers last month that the president is under investigation but at this point does not consider him to be a criminal target. The Post reported that Trump would like to sit down with Mueller's investigators.