Trump's plan to send troops to the border could cost more than $200 million by the end of the year

: Members of the Central American migrant caravan move towards their destination of the United States border on November 03, 2018 in Sayula de Aleman, Mexico.
(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

President Trump's plan to send up to 15,000 troops to the southern border to meet the caravan of mostly Honduran migrants slowly making its way through Mexico could cost more than $200 million by the end of the year, The Washington Post reports.

The Post story cites Pentagon figures as well as outside analysis, and it notes costs could go higher still if troops stay past mid-December. Gen. Martin Dempsey, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, labeled the plan "wasteful" on Twitter:

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.