The attack angered Americans, and President Woodrow Wilson ordered Brigadier General John J. Pershing to lead the Punitive Expedition in which the US Army invaded Mexico but failed to capture Villa.

[6] After the 1915 Battle of Celaya during the Mexican Revolution, where Villa sustained his greatest defeat, the Division of the North was in a disorganised condition, wandering around northern Mexico foraging for supplies.

An American kidnap victim travelling with the raiding party, Maud Hawk Wright, said that Villa came with 1,500 men but only attacked with about 600 because there was not enough ammunition for more raiders.

When the returning spies told him that only about thirty soldiers garrisoned Columbus (a significant error)[citation needed], Villa moved north and crossed the border about midnight.

Soon after the attack began, 2nd Lt. John P. Lucas, commanding the 13th Cavalry's machine gun troop, made his way barefooted from his quarters to the camp's barracks.

Major Frank Tompkins, commanding the regiment's 3rd Squadron and acting as its executive officer, asked and received permission from Slocum to pursue the withdrawing Mexicans.

[16][17] On March 9, 1916, after the attack, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Newton Diehl Baker, Jr. to fill the vacant position of United States Secretary of War.

The Battle of Columbus resulted in the creation of the Punitive Expedition led by General John J. Pershing to track down and capture or kill Villa or disperse the attackers.

In January 1917, with the United States likely to enter World War I soon, and under intense diplomatic pressure from the Mexican government,[22] these troops were withdrawn from Mexico.

[23] On 19 March 2024, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador described the attack on Columbus as "daring" and "a symbol of resistance against imperialism", adding: "We should thank Villa [for preventing] what he considered acts of treason.