President Trump said on Thursday he most likely will station a few thousand National Guard troops at the 2,000-mile-long Mexican border until the wall he wants to build, to keep out illegal immigrants, is completed.

The president last month signed a federal spending bill from Congress that contained $1.6 billion to pay for six months of work on the wall.  The president has asked for $25 billion to complete the wall. When asked by reporters how many National Guard troops he wanted at the border, he said “anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 and we will keep a large portion of the troops there until such time as we get the wall.”

On Wednesday, the administration said it was coordinating with the governors of the four U.S. states that border Mexico on deploying the National Guard troops.  The National Guard is a reserve wing of the U.S. armed forces that is partly under the supervision of state governors.

The Guard troops would not be involved in law enforcement but would assist U.S Customs and Border Protection personnel with stopping illegal immigrants from entering the United States.  Pentagon officials, speaking with reporters at a press briefing yesterday, said they did not yet know where funding for Guard troops at the border would come from.