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National Guard: Border Duty Not 'Military Operation'
The U.S. National Guard Bureau chief Friday dismissed suggestions the United States was militarizing its border with Mexico by sending thousands of soldiers and airmen to help secure the porous frontier.
"We're not putting 6,000 armed national guardsmen on the border as a show of force," said U.S. Lt. Gen. Steven Blum.
"This is not a military operation. We are in support of a homeland security operation or a customs and border protection operation," he said.
Blum said Mexicans were used to seeing guardsmen, who also have supported U.S. counternarcotics efforts, along the border. The deployment, therefore, of as many as 6,000 troops to the Southwest "does not excite our Mexican friends and allies in any unproductive manner."
Mexican officials have objected to U.S. plans to send troops and build fences along the border. Rather than focusing on tightening the border, Mexico wants the United States to make it easier for immigrants to become legal.
Story Continues Below But in a congressional election year, the Bush administration and lawmakers have pushed for a clampdown on illegal immigration and focused on the Mexican border, where hundreds of thousands of people sneak into the United States every year.
As Congress considers two vastly different proposals on the table to overhaul immigration law, the National Guard has begun to deploy to the area to support law enforcement.
About 3,600 guardsmen have been sent to four border states, putting the Guard ahead of schedule for placing 6,000 troops along the border by Aug. 1, Blum said.
That deployment, he said, does not affect the Guard's ability to support other homeland missions, such as hurricane response, or its role fighting overseas. Each state has its own National Guard that is commanded by governors. Blum said 30 governors agreed to provide troops for the operation and none had refused. California sent 1,000 troops but turned down a request for another 1,500 troops.
The border operation will focus on what Blum called the main problem areas: Tucson and Yuma, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas.
The Guard will build patrol roads and fences and install lighting, sensors and towers with cameras, he said. It will provide aerial reconnaissance as well as communications, medical and intelligence analysis capabilities, Blum said.
(c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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