Keep up border crackdown, Sessions tells lawmen in N.M.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — As thousands of National Guard troops deploy to the Mexico border, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions took his tough stance on immigration enforcement to New Mexico, telling border sheriffs Wednesday that cracking down on illegal crossings and drug smuggling is necessary to build a lawful immigration system.

Sessions ticked off stories about smugglers being caught with opioids and cocaine at the U.S.-Mexico border and legal loopholes that have encouraged more immigrants to make the journey.

“This is not acceptable. It cannot continue,” he said. “No one can defend the way the system is working today.”

Outside, dozens of migrant-rights activists protested Sessions’ visit, once again rejecting his previous characterization of the border region as “ground zero” in the presidential administration’s fight against cartels and human traffickers.

“He was wrong then, and he is wrong now,” said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights in El Paso, Texas, just south of Las Cruces.

As Sessions’ motorcade arrived, the group chanted in Spanish and waved signs against the proposed border wall and the deployment of National Guard troops to the region

Sessions was speaking in Las Cruces at the Texas Border Sheriff’s Coalition annual spring meeting with the Southwestern Border Sheriff’s Coalition, which includes 31 sheriff’s offices from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

The departments patrol areas located within 25 miles of the border.

California, meanwhile, agreed Wednesday to deploy 400 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border at President Donald Trump’s request, but not all will head to the border as Trump wants and none will enforce federal immigration enforcement.

“Let’s be clear on the scope of this mission,” Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, wrote in a letter to the Trump administration. “This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life.”

Instead, Brown said, the troops would join an existing program to curb transnational drug crime, firearms smuggling and human trafficking. They would join 250 California National Guard troops currently deployed, including 55 who are at the border.

The Guard members may be deployed at the border, the coast and elsewhere statewide, Brown said.

Trump wants up to 4,000 troops sent to the border to fight illegal immigration and drug trafficking and has already won commitments for about 1,600 from the Republican governors of the other states that border Mexico — Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Trump administration is “glad” that California has agreed to deploy troops “to help secure the southern border.”

Sessions’ trip to Las Cruces, a small city about an hour north of the border, comes as construction begins nearby on 20 miles of steel fencing that officials say is a part of Trump’s promised wall.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials say the heightened barrier will be harder to get over, under and through than the old post and rail barriers that line the stretch of sprawling desert west of the Santa Teresa border crossing.

Citing a crisis on the border, Sessions has issued an order directing federal prosecutors to put more emphasis on charging people with illegal entry.

He took another swipe Wednesday at so-called sanctuary cities, telling the sheriffs that it’s “illogical and insane” that a person can enter the country illegally on Monday and make their way to San Francisco by Wednesday and not be deported.

Sessions said the crisis has been allowed to fester for decades while politicians made promises but did nothing to fix the system.