WASHINGTON — National Guard troops will head to the U.S.-Mexico border Aug. 1 for a year-long deployment to keep a lookout for illegal border crossers and smugglers and help in criminal investigations, federal officials said Monday.
The troops will be armed but can use their weapons only to protect themselves, Gen. Craig McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau said at a Pentagon news conference. The troops will undergo initial training and be fully deployed along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border by September.
The deployment announcement comes as drug-related violence has escalated in Mexico. Several people were killed over the weekend in a car bombing and in a separate massacre at a private party in Mexico. It also comes as the U.S. debate over illegal aliens has intensified in this election year.
“The border is more secure and more resourced than it has ever been, but there is more to be done,” said Alan Bersin, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, part of the Homeland Security Department.
The 1,200 troops will be distributed among four border states, with Arizona getting 524; Texas 250; California 224; and New Mexico 72. An additional 130 would be assigned to a national liaison office.
Bersin also said the Homeland Security Department will provide six more aircraft, including helicopters. He said at least 300 Customs and Border Protection agents and inspection officers would be sent to the Tucson area, along with mobile surveillance vans and additional technology.
“It will help,” Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat, said Monday in Santa Fe, N.M., where he was attending the annual meeting of the Conference of Western Attorneys General. “Manpower clearly has been deficient. Technology has been somewhat deficient and they’re bolstering that.”
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, said the deployment is neither enough “nor tied to a strategy to comprehensively defeat the increasingly violent drug- and alien smuggling cartels that operate in Arizona on a daily basis.”
Republican Sens. John Mc-Cain and Jon Kyl of Arizona said Obama’s administration was taking a step in the right direction but a lot more needed to be done.
U.S. Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick and Gabrielle Giffords, both Arizona Democrats, separately called the announced actions welcome but insufficient.
“This is the kind of action we want from the administration - not suing the state,” Kirkpatrick said, referring to the Department of Justice’s challenge to the new Arizona immigration enforcement law. “However, we should continue to move forward with a much larger commitment of National Guard troops right away and with an expansion of the Border Patrol to strengthen security for the long run.”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry also criticized the troops as “grossly insufficient” for the Texas border in a letter to the administration last week.
McKinley said even though the four border states are contributing 54,000 troops to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they still have a sizable number of Guard troops in the states for other deployments or disaster response. More can be deployed at state cost if governors wish but the 1,200 are being paid for by the federal government, he said.
“Right now I cannot see a case where we would be overextending the National Guard for this effort,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 07/20/2010