Trump sizes up border force
Guard likely stays till wall built, he says
PHOENIX — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to send between 2,000 and 4,000 National Guardsmen to the U.S.-Mexico border to help federal authorities fight illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but it wasn’t clear who would be called up or if they would be allowed to carry guns.
Trump’s comments to reporters on Air Force One were his first estimate on troop levels he believes are needed for border protection. It would be a lower number of troops than the 6,400 National Guardsmen that former President George W. Bush sent to the border between 2006 and 2008.
Trump said his administration is looking into the cost of deploying guardsmen on the border and added, “we’ll probably
keep them or a large portion of them until the wall is built.”
Earlier Thursday, Ronald Vitiello, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s acting deputy commissioner, cautioned against a rushed deployment.
“We are going to do it as quickly as we can do it safely,” Vitiello told Fox News Channel.
He said that guardsmen would be placed in jobs that do not require law enforcement work, an apparent reference to making arrests.
The National Guard in Texas expressed support but said in a statement that any deployment remained in “very early planning stages.” The Republican governors of Arizona and New Mexico also have backed the deployment. It remained unclear Thursday how California’s Democratic governor, Jerry Brown, would respond to Trump’s call.
Democratic Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon said she would not send troops if asked because she is “deeply troubled by Trump’s plan to militarize our border.” And Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, said he “would not be eager” to send troops because so many other states are closer to the border with Mexico.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, said he would never deploy National Guard troops “based simply on the whim of the president’s morning Twitter habit.”
In Washington, Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told reporters at the Pentagon that it has not yet been determined how many, if any, of the troops in the border security operation will be armed.
With troops in every state, the National Guard has been called on by past presidents and governors to help secure U.S. borders, and the Texas National Guard said it had “firsthand knowledge of the mission and operating area” that will allow it to move seamlessly into the new role.
Trump ordered the deployment because “we are at a crisis point” with illegal immigration, Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen of the Department of Homeland Security said.
“We’d like to stop it before the numbers get even bigger,” she said.
In a telephone interview, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he talked to Nielsen on Thursday and offered the support of the Arkansas National Guard.
“We have done that before,” Hutchinson said. In 2006, Arkansas deployed about 200 guardsmen in a similar mission, said Hutchinson, who served as a federal homeland security undersecretary under Bush.
Trump “needs the cooperation of the governors to do this because he could federalize them and he chooses not to do that,” Hutchinson said.
He said he doesn’t expect that the number of Arkansas guardsmen sent to the border “will exceed what we have done before.”
Nielsen has told Mexican authorities that National Guard troops would not be armed or participate in immigration or customs activities, according to the Mexican Foreign Ministry.
Nielsen’s plan, though still vague, would use guardsmen in support roles, in accordance with U.S. law, resembling the border deployments ordered by Presidents Barack Obama and Bush.
Mexico said it has emphasized to the Trump administration that if the deployment comes to resemble a militarization of the border, “it will gravely damage the bilateral relationship.”
Trump has spent several days warning of a growing crisis on the border even though illegal immigration is at its lowest level in decades. He has repeatedly accused Mexico of doing too little to stop travelers from Central America.
The plan to use National Guard units was arranged hastily after Trump — who has been frustrated with his inability to get Congress or Mexico to pay for a border wall — said publicly this week that he wanted to use the military to patrol the border until the wall is built.
On Thursday, he offered praise for Mexican officials for stopping “the caravan” of about 1,000 mostly Central Americans from entering the United States. Spurred by media reports of the foreigners, who are in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, Trump has blasted the caravan in recent days.
Trump’s tweet also celebrated the overall drop in illegal border crossings, but still called it “UNACCEPTABLE.”
The dual messages underscore the challenge Trump faces in declaring an emergency at the border to secure Guard troops and calling up National Guard units, as some critics say it is a manufactured crisis.
PAST DEPLOYMENTS
U.S. presidents have deployed the military or the National Guard to help the Border Patrol in the past.
In 1997, camouflage-clad U.S. Marines ordered to patrol the border for drugs in west Texas shot and killed an 18-year-old American, Esequiel Hernandez Jr., while he was herding his family’s goats near the tiny village of Redford, Texas, along the border.
That shooting sparked anger in the region and ended the President Bill Clinton-era military presence on the border.
After Sept. 11, 2001, Bush sent unarmed National Guard units to the border to support federal agents.
Bush deployed troops again from June 2006 to July 2008, with guardsmen performing support duties aimed at freeing up federal agents from routine non-enforcement tasks so they could focus on border security.
In 2010, Obama deployed National Guard troops to the border to deal with a surging drug-trafficking related violence.
Arrests along the U.S. border with Mexico jumped to 50,308 in March, a 37 percent increase from February, and more than triple the same period last year. Border arrests rose 10 of the past 11 months after falling in April 2017 to the lowest level since the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003.
But Republican Mayor Dee Margo of El Paso, Texas, told NPR’s Morning Edition on Thursday he was not convinced extra forces are needed for his border city, which he called “the safest” in the United States.
“We already have a fence that was established during the Bush administration that runs through the city,” he said.
Instead of more troops, Margo said, “what I would love to see is a better understanding of what truly goes on at the border.”
MEXICO ANSWERS
In Mexico, the country’s politicians put aside differences to condemn Trump’s deployment decision.
In the midst of a hotly contested campaign ahead of the July 1 presidential elections, President Enrique Pena Nieto praised even opposition candidates he usually quarrels with, as they joined in criticizing Trump’s latest move.
“The presidential candidates, independently of their natural differences, all of them coincided in rejecting these measures that run counter to good relations between neighbors,” Pena Nieto said in a broadcast message.
He mentioned all four candidates, including front runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, at whom he has leveled veiled criticism in the past.
Lopez Obrador said Wednesday that “we will not accept the use of force, the militarization of the border. Problems aren’t solved that way; peace and tranquility are derived from justice.” Lopez Obrador said Mexico should send a line of white-clad peace demonstrators to the border.
Pena Nieto added, addressing Trump: “[I]f your recent statements are derived from your frustration with [U.S.] domestic politics, with your laws or your congress, deal with them, not with us Mexicans. We will not allow any negative rhetoric to define our actions.”
The country’s senate passed a resolution Wednesday calling on Mexico’s government to suspend cooperation with the U.S. on illegal immigration and drug trafficking in retaliation for Trump’s move.
Presidential candidate Ricardo Anaya went further, saying Mexico should limit anti-terrorism cooperation until the National Guard is withdrawn. Anaya is the candidate of a left-right coalition.
Ruling party candidate Jose Antonio Meade said that “independently of our political differences, it is time for all the presidential candidates to unite in defense of the sovereignty and dignity of the nation … to reject and repudiate this kind of measure.”
Others took Trump’s decision with a grain of salt after the Mexican government said guardsmen “will not carry weapons or have immigration or customs duties.”
The newspaper El Heraldo said in a headline Thursday: “U.S. deploys National Guard … tin soldiers.”
On the border, Mexicans unanimously rejected the measure but also agreed it wouldn’t have much practical effect.
“The attitude of militarization seems to us like just one more insult that we Mexicans don’t deserve,” said Ramon Galindo, the state government representative in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso.
“Having soldiers on the other side won’t make absolutely any difference at all,” Galindo said, noting that migration, trade and cross-border exchanges are a reality.
CARAVAN DISPERSES
People in a caravan that drew criticism from Trump began packing up their possessions and boarding buses to Mexico City and the nearby city of Puebla on Thursday.
The travelers had been camped out at a sports field in southern Oaxaca since the weekend. Trump had said they were marching toward the U.S. border, though that was never part of the organizers’ plans.
Trump wrote on his Twitter account Thursday that “the Caravan is largely broken up thanks to the strong immigration laws of Mexico and their willingness to use them so as not to cause a giant scene at our Border.”
On Thursday, one bus left the camp before dawn en route to the central city of Puebla, where organizers hope to hold a migrants’ rights symposium. Another left at midmorning carrying the travelers to Mexico City, where some want to set up meetings with international organizations to talk about the plight of migrants fleeing violence and poverty.
At its height last week, the caravan consisted of almost 1,500 people mostly from Central America. Many have been given temporary transit visas which they intend to use to request asylum in the United States.
Information for this article was contributed by Anita Snow, Catherine Lucey, Nomaan Merchant, Bob Christie, Jacques Billeaud, Morgan Lee, Russell Contreras, Zeke Miller and Robert Burns of The Associated Press; by Cecilia Sanchez and Noah Bierman of Tribune News Service; and by Michael R. Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.