See page 26 and 27 of the V1.0 book. It lays out the actions of the CENTAG that would had US forces land in Jugoslavia/Yugoslavia. NATO was driving into southern Germany to seize the industrial region that borders along the Czech border region. While the Romanians and Jugoslaivians army was driving north to try and assist and break any lines of communication between the PACT and the Italian/Greek army that had occupied Jugoslavia. The offensive was wasted by the end of the year. It says that the Jugoslavian drive was held up at Lake Balaton, which is located in Hungary. So assume that the Jugoslavians, Romanians, and US forces were driving north up to Hungary and meet up with the German IV and V corps which were in Southern Germany (see the W. German OOB in NATO vehicle guide) that were driving south to meet up.
So more than likely those units from the US were sent to try and help bolster the Jugoslavian push against Italians and make the meet up with the CENTAG and capture those industrial zones not damaged in 1997 of Southern Germany, Northern Italy, and Czech region. The move was probably made before the actions of Mexico and the Soviet forces in Mexico invaded the southern states. At which probably when the ships were at sea that the Mexicans came across and well past the point of radio communication to come back.
Even money guessing the total collapse of all command and control as well as the governmental split in 1997-98, that the JCS only knew what the DIA could tell them from what limited human intelligence could gather and report back via long communications (there manual makes references that even radios are heavily damaged due to EMP effects and and limited to LOS [both due to radiation in the air and real world applications] so you have to daisy-chain radio data back to someplace and hope the message stays together correctly). In my mind then it makes it reasonable that forces were already in transit to their ports of embarking or were embarking when the Mexican's cross the Rio Grande, again if not already at sea. So trying to turn them around to respond to the newest threat wasn't considered until those ships were past a point of no return compared to the fuel already expended.
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Plus NYC is in absolute chaos and you send the 42nd and its tanks to Yugoslavia and leave NYC in the hands of a light infantry division that has no heavy armor?
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The answer to this would be MOUT, Military Operations in Urban Terran, all the tactics manuals says to keep heavy armor out of major cities. The threats from above to armor is just too dangerous as well as hostile forces making easy tank traps of all manner that keeps armor moving to specific kill zones. See some of the photos from the Russian experiences in Chechnya with their armor being massacred. That is why in the real world, the Russians started to develop armor that basically vaporized whole buildings with a metric butt ton of guns and rockets. If not having heavy bombers come over and raining theater ballistic missiles into an area and level whole city block. Which would allow for their armored forces to move thru a city.
Similar, examining the Allied Forces experience going through the German forces in Europe and the German forces experiences in Russia showed that armor even then would be dangerous. Which lead to the Soviets to develop the assault guns with a 122m to 152mm gun installed and the Germans to do things like the Strumpanzer and Strumtiger. While the Allied forces never developed specific urban assault vehicles.