Trump: 2,000-4,000 troops needed for border security

Associated Press

PHOENIX

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to send between 2,000 and 4,000 National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border to help federal officials fight illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but it wasn’t clear who would be called up or if they would even be allowed to carry guns.

Trump’s comments to reporters on Air Force One were his first estimate on guard levels he believes are needed for border protection. It is lower than the 6,400 National Guard members that former President George Bush sent to the border between 2006 and 2008.

Trump said his administration is looking into the cost of sending the troops to 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 guard members would be placed in jobs that do not require law-enforcement work, an apparent reference to undertaking patrols and making arrests.

The Republican governors of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have backed the deployment but it was unclear how Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown would respond to Trump’s call.

Brown’s office repeatedly referred requests for comment to the California National Guard, which said the state first must be informed where money for the deployment would come from, how long it would last and clearly define the operation’s objectives.

In Washington, Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. 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.

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 rose 10 of the last 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 condemned Trump’s deployment decision and Mexico’s Senate passed a resolution Wednesday calling for the suspension of cooperation on illegal immigration and drug trafficking in retaliation.

In 1997, camouflage-clad U.S. Marines ordered to patrol the border for drugs in West Texas shot and killed 18-year-old 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 along the international line.

After Sept. 11, Bush sent unarmed National Guard units to the border to support federal agents.