Guard troops may patrol border starting next week

WASHINGTON — The first National Guard troops to help the Border Patrol stem the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico could begin work as early as next week, defense officials told Congress on Wednesday.

Teams of about 200 soldiers each will begin planning missions with Border Patrol and Customs officials in each of the four border states — California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico — as early as June 1, said Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, the National Guard's top officer.

Bush administration officials have provided several details about the border-security plan, but testimony by Blum and other officials before the House Armed Services Committee was some of the most in-depth explanations of how it's supposed to work.

"This will be a temporary mission, as was airport security after 9/11," Blum said. "We expect to work ourself out of a job here as quickly as the Border Patrol and Customs, law-enforcement agencies and [Department of Homeland Security] are able to assume the mission."

Blum said teams would be made up of volunteers from the four border states who will stay on duty for at least a year to manage other forces that will work on 21-day rotations.

President Bush announced May 15 that he would send as many as 6,000 National Guardsmen to reinforce Border Patrol officers on the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico boundary. The deployment could last as long as two years while the Border Patrol trains 6,000 new officers.

About 10,300 of the agency's 11,583 officers are stationed along the Mexico border, Border Patrol chief David Aguilar said. They're overtaxed by millions of illegal crossings each year. Border Patrol officers last year caught and sent home almost 1.2 million people.

While lawmakers agreed that strong action was needed, they raised concerns over how well National Guard forces would be trained for the mission, how it might affect the Guard's ability to provide troops for the Iraq war and still respond to domestic emergencies, and how armed troops might interact with civilians.

"Not all units sent to the border region will be performing tasks that fall within the given tasks that they have been trained to perform," said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., the committee's top Democrat. "I am greatly concerned about the impact this plan will have on the operational readiness of those units and the additional strain it will have on the National Guard."

Blum said the troops deployed at any given time would represent less than 2 percent of available Guard forces. About 71,000 National Guardsmen are in Iraq out of a total force nationwide of 445,000 part-time soldiers and airmen.

Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, said troops will conduct aerial surveillance and reconnaissance, build new roads and fences, provide intelligence and analysis to help track illegal crossings, transport Border Patrol officers and detainees, and assist with a number of logistics functions.

"Law enforcement along the border will remain a civilian function," McHale said.

Aguilar said the National Guard presence would allow more than 500 officers working in clerical and other jobs to return to law enforcement.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, who served 26 years in the Border Patrol, said the presence of National Guard forces might send the wrong message.

"The concerns that many of us have ... is that we're doing something here that is giving the impression that we consider Mexico and Latin America our enemies and that we're putting troops on the border," he said.