Governors calling back Guard troops

National Guard troops from eight states will be withheld or recalled from the southern border, the states’ governors announced this week, over mounting objections to the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from their parents there.

The governors of Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia and North Carolina declared that their soldiers would not help to secure the United States’ border with Mexico, adding their names to widening outrage over the policy.

President Donald Trump called in April for the National Guard to be deployed to the border, saying that thousands of troops were needed to stanch illegal crossings, even though they are at a 46-year low. Few governors outside the Southwest immediately embraced the plan.

“Until this policy of separating children from their families has been rescinded, Maryland will not deploy any National Guard resources to the border,” Gov. Larry Hogan, R-Md., said Tuesday. “Earlier this morning, I ordered our four crew members and helicopter to immediately return from where they were stationed in New Mexico.”

Hogan and several of the other governors who released statements are up for re-election this year. Their decisions, while all in defiance of Trump’s immigration crackdown at the border, were largely symbolic, as their states were not among those that had been planning to send large numbers of troops in the first place.