John Velis seems to like speaking to the press. The state senator, a Westfield Democrat, is outspoken on a wide range of topics.
However, there’s one topic that Velis has been quiet about for the past year.
Since Velis, a major in the Massachusetts Army National Guard, announced last October in a press release that he would be deployed to the “Southwestern border of the United States in the imminent future,” he and his office have offered few details on his assignment. Over the course of his seven-month absence from the Legislature, Velis’ office refused to answer questions about his deployment, and the same remained true upon his return.
It was only in a May 7 social media post that he explicitly acknowledged his involvement in Joint Task Force Southern Border — “an experience I won’t ever forget,” he wrote.
Contacted over the summer, Velis’ office would not reveal any further details of the senator’s deployment nor offer an interview. The silence, his office said, was for “operational security reasons,” which they would not explain further.
However, information provided to The Shoestring by the Massachusetts National Guard and Joint Task Force Southern Border appears to show Velis was deployed in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley as an “individual augment” to a larger deployment.
Lt. Thomas Kraft, a Joint Task Force Southern Border spokesperson, told The Shoestring that the duty of Massachusetts National Guard personnel assigned to the task force is to “integrate with [Department of Homeland Security] partners to leverage advanced military capabilities” and “conduct support, detection, patrol, and logistics operations to fortify and protect the border region.”
Joint Task Force Southern Border is a key facet of the Trump administration’s border and immigration agenda. The administration describes that agenda as the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.
Included in Velis’ office’s response over the summer was a statement attributed to the senator.
“Every day that I wake up and still get to be in the United States Armed Services and the Massachusetts National Guard is the honor and privilege of a lifetime,” he wrote. “And as any service member knows, that honor includes carrying out the mission assigned to them, regardless of where that may be. Being part of the less than 1% of our nation that serves in our military is something that I will always be incredibly proud of.”
Reached again via email shortly before publication, Velis added, “I believe it is absolutely vital and critical that the US Southern Border is secure.”
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Activated by U.S. Northern Command on March 14, 2025, Joint Task Force Southern Border came as part of the Department of Defense’s efforts to make “securing the southern border a top priority” in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.”
The task force aims “to secure and seal the southern border,” consolidating border operations under a single command and overseeing subordinate units along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border from San Diego, California, to McAllen, Texas.
When the task force assumed control of military operations at the southern border, the number of troops deployed in the region stood at 10,000, up from the 2,500 who were deployed there at the time of Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, according to U.S. Northern Command.
Trump’s mobilization of National Guard and active-duty troops to the southern border represents an escalation of a military build-up there, which began during Trump’s first administration and was maintained under President Joe Biden.
Under Joint Task Force Southern Border, all six branches of the military provide various forms of support to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including “ground-based support to detect, track, and monitor suspected illegal activity using military tactical vehicles or foot patrols.”
Deployed along the southern border in the Rio Grande Valley, Velis likely operated within the South Texas National Defense Area, a 250-mile stretch of the Rio Grande River where task force service members possess expanded authorities to temporarily detain trespassers, conduct cursory searches, and assist with the installation of barriers, signage, and fencing.
The Trump administration has established five other “national defense areas” along the southern border: New Mexico, Texas, Yuma, California, and Del Rio-Falcon. By converting portions of land into extensions of military bases, the administration is able to circumvent federal law preventing military personnel from detaining civilians on domestic soil, according to ProPublica.
Together, the six national defense areas cover about 40% of the southern border.
Although military trespass cases have soared since the first national defense area was established in April 2025, CBS reports Joint Task Force Southern Border only made 161 temporary detentions in those areas by mid-August of this year. Border Patrol agents have made the overwhelming majority of apprehensions at the southern border — 240,000 in fiscal year 2025 and 90,000 by September of the current fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Following attempts to get information from Velis’ office about his deployment, The Shoestring reached out to Joint Task Force Southern Border and the Massachusetts National Guard separately requesting information about Velis’ role in the task force.
The Massachusetts National Guard said Velis was assigned as an individual augment on a select rotation with units deployed to the southern border in support of Joint Task Force Southern Border. A spokesperson explained that an individual augment is a service member who deploys individually or in a small group to support a separate unit, branch, or joint operation.
According to both the task force and the Massachusetts National Guard, two Massachusetts National Guard units, the 211th Military Police Battalion and 1058th Transportation Company, have deployed in support of Joint Task Force Southern Border. Those units, which are still deployed, mobilized in October 2025. A task force spokesperson said those units are deployed along the southern border in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas.
The Shoestring has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for copies of Velis’ military records and information about the dates, location, and duty assignment of his deployment. The National Guard said the request has an estimated completion date of Nov. 23.
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Despite his reluctance to offer any specifics about his time at the southern border, Velis took a seemingly unprompted shot at the Democratic Socialists of America’s stance on border policy in a July 6 video posted to social media — one of the few times Velis has addressed his deployment to the border.
“This talking to camera thing … is not something I typically do,” he said.
Standing off-center, slightly out-of-frame, and holding a crumpled piece of paper, Velis spent most of his video lambasting the DSA’s “freedom of movement” plank on its 2025-2026 program, which calls for allowing “workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment opportunities without restrictive immigration controls.” The DSA position demands demilitarizing the border and ending all immigrant detention and deportations, among other things, to realize that end.
(Disclosure: The author of this story, Casey Buchholz, is a member of River Valley DSA.)
Velis condemned the DSA’s position as “wholly divorced from reality,” “certifiably insane,” and “incredibly dangerous.” He also asserted that “if the authors of this platform were to go down to the southern border … they would have a completely different take.” He made reference to what he says are the “the human trafficking, the drug trafficking, the sex trafficking, the drone things that are happening down there.”
Absent from Velis’ video is any mention of what he actually witnessed during his deployment — trafficking, drone activities, or otherwise — or his own positions on border and immigration policy.
Velis’ video came on the heels of high-profile Democratic primary wins by DSA-endorsed congressional candidates in New York and Colorado.
“I’ve heard from folks asking for my thoughts on the Democratic Socialist of America’s (DSA) recent electoral wins,” Velis wrote in the video’s caption. “Specifically many have asked what I think of their proposals related to the border given my recent deployment there.”
Velis ran unopposed in his September primary. And other Democratic incumbents across western Massachusetts survived their primaries with relative ease in the face of challenges from the left.
“It was pretty surprising to us that he chose targeting DSA,” Sasha Morsmith, the co-chair of River Valley DSA, said during a phone interview with The Shoestring. “We’ve not had a relationship with Sen. Velis in the past.”
Marissa Otero also said she was surprised by Velis’ decision to attack the DSA on social media based on who she knew him to be.
Otero, who volunteered for some of Velis’ past campaigns, interned for him when she was in college and worked in his office as a temporary constituent services liaison from December 2021 to February 2023.
In a phone interview with The Shoestring, Otero said she “loved working for his office” and has “a lot of respect for the Senator – a huge amount.” She knew him as someone “who is constantly listening and open to hearing people.”
The inflammatory nature of Velis’ comments about the DSA’s border and immigration policy conflict with his own past statements. In a September 2025 interview with 22News, Velis decried the polarizing role of social media in politics and described himself as someone who says “let’s sit down, let’s work together” to those with whom he disagrees.
Otero said the DSA “was not something that was on the forefront” when she worked for Velis. Neither was border and immigration policy.
“It was something he would address when it was needed, but because Massachusetts is not a border state there were a lot more pressing issues in western Mass that constituents would consider more of a priority,” she said.
Otero said she believes Velis’ deployment has probably influenced his thinking on the border and immigration.
“But that video was very much focused on one aspect of border immigration.” She continued, “The way he said it was harmful. It felt very misinformed. I wish he took a minute to explore more what DSA’s policy is rather than just calling them flat out asinine.”
In a comment below his Instagram video, Otero urged him to come up with policy solutions, in collaboration with the DSA, for migrants crossing the border in search of safety and a better life, as well as for the immigrant populations he serves in western Massachusetts.
Morsmith defended the DSA’s positions on immigration issues, which she said don’t come from naïveté.
“I’m not blind to the fact there’s violence or there are criminal organizations destabilizing communities [along the southern border],” she said. “When you go in with a military approach, when you tear people from their families, or try to prevent them from making a better life, it doesn’t solve any problems, it pushes them to the side.”
Casey Buchholz
Casey Buchholz holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
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