By TOM KRISHER
AP Auto Writer

DETROIT — General Motors will attempt to cut costs by offering buyouts to about 18,000 white-collar workers in North America.

The company made the offer Wednesday to salaried workers with 12 or more years of service.

The announcement comes on the same day that GM reported a $2.5 billion third-quarter profit. The company says in a prepared statement that although it is performing well, it wants to continue to reduce costs while the company and the economy are strong.

The auto industry faces looming troubles such as slowing sales in the U.S. and China and higher steel and aluminum prices due to U.S. tariffs.

GM wouldn’t disclose terms of the buyout offers. The company has about 50,000 salaried workers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Company spokesman Patrick Morrissey wouldn’t say whether GM is trying to reach a target number of employees. Those who were given the offer have until Nov. 19 to make a decision, and they would leave the company by the end of the year, he said.

“Even with the progress we’ve made, we are taking proactive steps to get ahead of the curve by accelerating our efforts to address overall business performance. We are doing this while our company and economy are strong. The voluntary severance program for eligible salaried employees is one example of our efforts to improve cost efficiency,” the company said.

GM has long talked about reducing costs in preparation for an economic downturn. The company strives to continue churning out profits through vehicle sales while, at the same time, investing in new technologies such as electric or autonomous cars. The company is close to delivering on a promise to reduce structural costs by $6.5 billion annually by the end of this year.

Savings from the employee reductions would come in 2019, after the buyouts take effect.

Morrissey wouldn’t say if GM will begin to lay employees off if too few workers take voluntary buyouts.
“We will evaluate the need to implement after we see the results of the voluntary program and other cost reduction efforts,” he said.

Retired Chief Financial Officer Chuck Stevens hinted at white-collar cutbacks in April of 2017 when he told analysts that GM is looking for cuts as it simplifies its business after its exit from Europe. Simplification “will allow us to take significant structure out of the business, whether it’s corporate staff, whether it’s engineering staff,” he said on an earnings conference call.

Last year, GM sold its European Opel and Vauxhall units to France’s PSA Group.

Most of GM’s salaried workers are in the U.S., mainly in Michigan, at its Detroit headquarters, a huge technical center in suburban Warren, a testing center in nearby Milford, and an engine and transmission development center in Pontiac.

Shares of GM, which had risen about 7 percent after the company announced its third-quarter earnings Wednesday morning, were up nearly 10 percent after news of the buyouts broke. Shares that had been falling since June rose $3.20, to $36.73.

SEDGWICK COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating the cause of a fatal accident and have identified the victim.

Just after 1:30p.m. Tuesday, a vehicle driven by Rebecca Lambert, 65, Sedgwick, was traveling in the 8900 Block of North Ridge Road, according to Lt. Tim Myers. The vehicle rear-ended a stopped Waste Management trash truck.

Lambert was pronounced dead at the scene.  The trash truck operator was not injured, according to Myers.

MCPHERSON, Kan. (AP) — Pfizer Inc., which already employs nearly 2,000 people in a Kansas town with a population of just over 13,000, is looking for hundreds more employees.

The company, which manufactures injectable medicines, is scouring the state for 350 more workers for its McPherson plant. Pfizer has had job fairs in Wichita and Salina to fill a variety of jobs.

Carole Johnson, site leader at the McPherson plant, says the company is responding to an increase in demand.

Johnson said the search for workers is more challenging because of Kansas’ 3.3 percent statewide unemployment rate.

The plant is trying to fill a variety of positions, such as production supervisors, project managers, process engineers and microbiologists. Many of the open positions don’t require a scientific or medical education.

By ASTRID GALVAN
Associated Press

PHOENIX — The more than 5,200 active-duty troops being sent by President Donald Trump to the U.S.-Mexico border will be limited in what they can do under a federal law that restricts the military from engaging in law enforcement on American soil.

That means the troops will not be allowed to detain immigrants, seize drugs from smugglers or have any direct involvement in stopping a migrant caravan that is still about 1,000 miles from the nearest border crossing.

Instead, their role will largely mirror that of the existing National Guard troops — about 2,000 in all — deployed to the border over the past six months, including providing helicopter support for border missions, installing concrete barriers and repairing and maintaining vehicles. The new troops will include military police, combat engineers and helicopter companies equipped with advanced technology to help detect people at night.

The extraordinary military operation comes a week before the Nov. 6 midterm elections as Trump has sought to transform fears about the caravan and immigration into electoral gains. On Tuesday, he stepped up his dire warnings, calling the band of migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America an “invasion.”

“Our Military is waiting for you!” he tweeted.

R. Gil Kerlikowske, Customs and Border Protection commissioner from 2014 to 2017, said the military cannot stop asylum seekers who show up at border crossings to seek protection, and that Border Patrol agents have had no trouble apprehending people who cross illegally.

“I see it as a political stunt and a waste of military resources and waste of tax dollars,” said Kerlikowske, who was at the helm during a major surge of Central Americans migrants in 2014. “To use active-duty military and put them in that role, I think is a huge mistake. I see it as nothing more than pandering to the midterm elections by the president.”

Traveling mostly on foot, the caravan of some 4,000 migrants and a much smaller group of hundreds more are still weeks, if not months, before reaching the U.S. border. Thousands have already dropped out, applying for refugee status in Mexico or taking the Mexican government up on free bus rides back home, and the group is likely to dwindle even more during the arduous journey ahead.

Another smaller caravan earlier this year numbered only a couple hundred by the time it arrived at the Tijuana-San Diego crossing.

And despite the heightened rhetoric, the number of immigrants apprehended at the border is dramatically lower than past years. Border Patrol agents this year made only a quarter of the arrests they made in 2000 at the height of illegal immigration, when the agency had half of the staffing it does today. The demographics have also drastically changed, from mostly Mexican men traveling alone, to Central American families with children.

Migrants arriving at the border will now see a sizable U.S. military presence — more than double the 2,000 who are in Syria fighting the Islamic State group — even though their mission will be largely a support role.

That’s because the military is bound by the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th- century federal law that restricts participation in law enforcement activities. Unless Congress specifically authorizes it, military personnel can’t have direct contact with civilians, including immigrants, said Scott R. Anderson of The Brookings Institution.

Air Force Gen. Terrence O’Shaughnessy, head of U.S. Northern Command, said Tuesday that at least 5,239 troops were being sent to the Southwest border as the Pentagon works to meet requests from the Department of Homeland Security.

“The 5,239 are going forward and there will be additional forces over and above the 5,239,” he said, adding that number “is not the top line.”

Asked about the use of weapons, O’Shaughnessy said the active-duty troops have been given clear guidance on the use of force and there will be unit and individual training to make sure they know what they can and can’t do. Generally, U.S. troops are authorized to use force in self-defense.

Still, the large troop deployment will be limited to performing similar support functions as the National Guard troops Trump has already sent to the border.

These include 1,500 flight hours logged by about 600 National Guard troops in Arizona since they were deployed this spring. Members of the guard have also repaired more than 1,000 Border Patrol vehicles and completed 1,000 hours of supply and inventory, according to Customs and Border Protection.

In one case, a group of Border Patrol agents tracking drug smugglers in the remote Arizona desert in August called on a National Guard helicopter to keep an eye on the suspects and guide agents on the ground until they had them in custody. That operation resulted in several arrests and the seizure of 465 pounds of marijuana.

O’Shaughnessy said there were about 1,000 troops already in Texas and that will grow to at least 1,800, likely by Wednesday. The deployments to Arizona and California will follow. All are going to staging bases in the states, and there are none at the border yet, he said.

It remains unclear why the administration was choosing to send active-duty troops given that they will be limited to performing the support functions the Guard already is doing.

The California National Guard has pledged up to 400 troops to the president’s border mission through March 31. Jerry Brown, the only Democratic governor in the four states bordering Mexico and a frequent Trump critic, conditioned his support on the troops having nothing to do with immigration enforcement or building border barriers.

Brown said the California troops would help fight transnational criminal gangs and drug and firearms smugglers.

In New Mexico, 118 Guard troops have been helping with vehicle maintenance and repair, cargo inspection operations, surveillance and communications.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pledged 400 troops to the border in April. Maj. Gen. John Nichols, the head of the Texas National Guard, told Congress in July that his troops served in a “variety of support roles,” including driving vehicles, security monitoring, and administration.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump’s stance on immigration issues (all times local):

President Donald Trump says the right to citizenship for babies born to non-U.S. citizens on American soil “will be ended one way or the other.”

As Trump considers an executive action to curtail what he terms “so-called Birthright Citizenship,” he tweets that “It is not covered by the 14th Amendment.”

So-called Birthright Citizenship, which costs our Country billions of dollars and is very unfair to our citizens, will be ended one way or the other. It is not covered by the 14th Amendment because of the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Many legal scholars agree…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

The World is using our laws to our detriment. They laugh at the Stupidity they see!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018

He added Wednesday: “Many legal scholars agree” with his interpretation.

In fact, House Speaker Paul Ryan and scholars widely pan the idea that Trump could unilaterally change the rules on who is a citizen. And it’s highly questionable whether an act of Congress could do it, either.

Trump has discussed the issue before and reinjected it into the political conversation just days before the 2018 midterms as he looks to energize his base.

___

12:30 a.m.

President Donald Trump is rushing out hardline immigration declarations, promises and actions as he tries to mobilize supporters to retain Republican control of Congress in the midterm elections.

Trump says he’s sending thousands of U.S. troops to stop an “invasion” of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border even though the migrants are on foot hundreds of miles away. Trump says tent cities could be set up for asylum seekers even though that would not resolve the massive U.S. backlog of asylum seekers. And Trump says he’d like to end the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship even though most legal scholars say that would require a new constitutional amendment.

Trump says this “has nothing to do with elections,” but his timing is striking.

Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 concentrated on border fears, and that’s his final-week focus in the midterm fight.