Trump says he will call up more military at US-Mexico border

US President Donald Trump told reporters during a roundtable event on Wednesday that he is "going to have to call up more military" to the southern border, adding to the administration's attempts to address a historic increase in the number of migrant apprehensions.

"I'm going to have to call up more military. Our military, don't forget, can't act like they would normally act because if they got a little rough, everybody would go crazy," Trump told reporters in San Antonio, Texas, a city with so many military bases in the area that it's been given the nickname "Military City, USA."

"They have all these horrible laws that the Democrats won't change, they will not change them. And I think they will pay a very big price in 2020 for all of the things," Trump said. "I think the border is going to be an incredible issue."

The President's call to add more troops to the southern border comes after the Department of Homeland Security released data on Tuesday which confirmed that last month Border Patrol apprehended more people on the southern border than any month since 2008.

Trump in February had deployed an additional 3,750 U.S. troops to the country’s southwestern border to support Customs and Border Protection, agents.

Later that month, Democratic governors of states including Wisconsin, New Mexico, and California withdrew their National Guard troops, saying there was not enough evidence of a security crisis to justify keeping them there.

Trump, who drew sharp criticism for saying during the 2016 presidential campaign that Mexico was sending rapists and drug runners to the United States, said on Wednesday that those comments were tame compared to the stories he had heard since.

“People are dying. Great people are dying. Bad people are coming up. You have both,” he said. “From the time I made my first speech at Trump Tower when I mentioned the word ‘rape’ and everybody went crazy - because that turned out to be nothing compared to what happens on those journeys up. Nothing. My speech was so tame, as it turned out.”

There have been thousands of American troops deployed to the southern border over the last year. At its peak, some 5,900 trooped were there as part of the border mission, which has involved surveillance, aviation support and the placement of concertina wire between ports of entry.