Ian Patrick, FISM News
The Department of Defense (DOD) is ramping up support to the southern border through the provision of National Guard troops from almost two dozen states.
As reported by The Center Square, DOD requested the deployment of around 2,500 National Guard troops to help federal immigration officials deal with the southern border crisis.
A DOD spokesperson said the troops are working “only in support missions … and are prohibited under federal law from detaining undocumented migrants or others caught crossing into the United States illegally.”
States that are sending troops to the border include Kentucky, South Carolina, Arkansas, Rhode Island, Illinois, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
National Guard aviation support is also being provided by Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
Prior to this report, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said in a statement that he would be sending 164 National Guard troops from two units to serve the nation during “the ongoing humanitarian crisis along our southern border.”
One of these units will “provide command and control over four subordinate units ‘companies’ from NH, RI, IL and KY numbering approximately 500-soldiers total.” The other unit “will be deployed to primarily surveillance sites along the border.”
Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies at the Washington D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, remarked that the presence of “more boots on the ground” will help the currently “overwhelmed” Border Patrol officers.
“One of the biggest security problems is that federal officials are so distracted dealing with migrants that the border is totally unguarded,” she added.
This nationwide deployment mirrors a similar one back in 2018 under President Donald Trump when he signed a proclamation to send the National Guard to the border.
At the time, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters that this decision was made to combat what she called the “unacceptable levels of illegal drugs, dangerous gang activity, transnational criminal organizations, and illegal immigration flow across our border.”
However, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been dealing with the brunt of the border crisis for years, decried Biden’s move as “deeply hypocritical” on the president’s part.
“It is hypocritical on the one hand for the president and his staff to criticize me for having to deploy the National Guard to respond to his open border policies, now for them only to begin to deploy [other states’] National Guards is deeply hypocritical,” Abbott told the The Center Square.
This remark was a reference to Operation Lone Star, launched by Abbott in 2021 as a means to respond to the surge of illegal immigrants at the border. As part of the operation, Abbott deployed his state’s National Guard.
Abbott also blasted other Democratic leaders for criticizing him “for helping out our local communities by busing out migrants to sanctuary cities like Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago, and then Biden and his administration moving migrants themselves in the middle of the night.”
The last comment refers to reports that the Biden administration flew illegal immigrants from the southern border to cities across the nation under cover of the night.
Abbott said his busing of migrants, which has received flak from Democratic leaders nationwide as he tests their previously stated “sanctuary city” claims, is “really nothing different than what the Biden administration is doing.”
Former acting Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Mark Morgan even said that Biden’s decision to mobilize the National Guard now, after previously denying requests even to cities like Washington D.C., is nothing more than “a political stunt.”
“These military resources are not being used to secure the border to apply consequences to those who are illegally entering the U.S.,” Morgan said. “Instead they will be used to expedite the processing and releasing of more illegal aliens into the U.S.”
Saying the problem at the border stems from “a policy issue,” Morgan added, “Biden’s open border policies are driving more and more people to come here as we’ve already seen from over 150 countries, including 78 terrorists that we know of.”