Mexico has deployed almost 15,000 soldiers and National Guard in the north of the country to stem the flow of illegal immigration across the border into the United States, the head of the Mexican Army said on Monday.

Mexico has not traditionally used security forces to stop undocumented foreign citizens leaving the country for the United States, and photographs of militarized police catching Central American and Cuban women at the border in recent days have met with criticism.

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Mexico is trying to curb a surge of migrants from third countries crossing its territory in order to reach the United States, under the threat of tariffs on its exports by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made tightening border security a priority.

Responding to weekend reports of heavy-handed interventions by the military, Luis Cresencio Sandoval, the head of the Army, said soldiers were needed to back up migration officials in containment operations.

Alongside 6,500 members of the security forces sent to Mexico’s southern border area with Guatemala, where many migrants enter, a larger contingent was in the north, he said.

“In the northern part of the country we have a total deployment of 14,000, almost 15,000 units between the National Guard and the Army,” Sandoval told a regular news conference.

“If we left it completely in the hands of the National Institute of Migration it wouldn’t be possible,” he added. “That’s why we’re providing support, it’s a strategy being pursued on both borders.” (Excerpts from REUTERS NEWS article by Dave Graham)

Bodies are piling up at the U.S.-Mexico border as the summer heat and the press of both countries’ immigration policies take a toll, adding new urgency to the debate on Capitol Hill about what, if anything, should be done to stop it.

American officials recovered at least seven bodies over the last week, including three young children who appear to have died of dehydration in the sweltering Texas weather.

Mexican media, meanwhile, reported on a father and his 11-month-old daughter whose bodies were recovered on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande on Monday, a day after they were sucked under by the current, while the girl’s mother watched helplessly. . . .

The two bodies recovered on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande on Monday go to the heart of the immigration debate.

According to 21-year-old Tania Vanessa Avalos, the wife of the man and mother of the 11-month old girl who died, they had come from El Salvador to the border and had been waiting in Matamoros, Mexico, for several weeks, looking for a chance to appear at the border crossing and demand asylum.

Some border crossings are so overwhelmed by the migrant surge that the Trump administration has taken to “metering” the number of people who can present themselves each day to ask for asylum.

That policy has drawn stern criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill who say the limits are forcing migrants to try to cross illegally, rather than on the U.S. schedule.

Those claims got backing from Homeland Security’s inspector general, who in a report last year said both Border Patrol agents and migrants themselves said the metering policy sparked more increases in illegal crossings.

“One woman said she had been turned away three times by an officer on the bridge before deciding to take her chances on illegal entry,” the inspector general reported. (Excerpt from the Washington Times)