Up to 4,000 guardsmen needed at border, Trump says
PHOENIX — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to send 2,000 and 4,000 National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border to help federal officials fight illegal immigration and drug trafficking.
Trump’s comments on Air Force One were his first estimate on guard levels he believes are needed for border protection. It would be a lower number of troops than the 6,400 National Guard members that former President George W. Bush sent to the border between 2006 and 2008.
Trump said his administration is looking into the cost of sending the troops and added “we’ll probably keep them or a large portion of them until the wall is built.”
“We are going to do it as quickly as we can do it An Army National Guard specialist scans the U.S./Mexico border from the top of Radar Hill near Columbus, N.M., on June 12, 2006. The guardsman was part of a deployment authorized then by President George W. Bush.
safely,” Ronald Vitiello, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s acting deputy commissioner, told Fox News Channel.
He said guard members would be placed in jobs that do not require law
enforcement work, an apparent reference to undertaking patrols and making arrests.
In Washington, Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie told reporters that it had not been determined how many, if any, of the troops will be armed.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich indicated Thursday that he will send troops if Trump asks him to.
“He’s the president,” Kasich said. “If he says that there’s a reason to go, I don’t see a reason why we wouldn’t accommodate.”
The National Guard in Texas expressed support, and the Republican governors of New Mexico and Arizona also have backed the deployment.
With troops in all states, the National Guard has been called on by past presidents and governors to help secure U.S. borders. 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.
Nielsen said guard members would provide support to border officials, “help look at the technology, the surveillance ... in some cases we’ll ask for some fleet mechanics” and free up agents trained in law enforcement for other duties.
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 have risen 10 of the past 11 months after falling in April 2017 to the lowest since the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003.
In Mexico, the country’s politicians put aside differences to condemn Trump’s deployment decision. Mexico’s Senate passed a resolution Wednesday calling for the suspension of cooperation on illegal immigration and drug trafficking in retaliation.