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  1. #1
    Administrator Jean's Avatar
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    AZ lawmaker wants to send more Guard members to the border

    http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=6026621

    Feb 1, 2007
    Arizona lawmaker wants to send more Guard members to the border

    PHOENIX -- An Arizona lawmaker on Thursday proposed giving Gov. Janet Napolitano $10 million to pay for sending National Guard troops to the state's border with Mexico to detain illegal immigrants.


    Nearly 2,400 National Guard members are already at the state's border to perform support duties that tie up Border Patrol agents, but the soldiers aren't authorized to make arrests. Support duties include monitoring border points, assisting with cargo inspection and operating surveillance cameras.

    Republican state Rep. Warde Nichols of Chandler, an advocate for tougher immigration enforcement, wants an additional 100 border troops who would be able to detain immigrants if the governor used the National Guard in a state of emergency at the international boundary.

    Nichols said the proposal was needed because the current approach is too restrictive and leaves Guard members vulnerable to armed criminals.

    He has criticized the decision by four National Guard troops on Jan. 3 to back off and call in Border Patrol agents as gunmen approached their post near the Arizona-Mexico border. "They are basically in a position where they cannot defend themselves until fired upon," Nichols said.

    Democratic Rep. Steve Gallardo of Phoenix, a supporter of the actions of the troops in the Jan. 3 incident, said the proposal was politically motivated and wasn't going to solve the state's immigration woes.

    "It is painfully obvious that the Republicans are obsessed with trying to make the (Democratic) governor look bad," Gallardo said.

    Napolitano said Wednesday that the proposal wouldn't be a wise use of the National Guard. "It's being effective," she said of the Guard's current border work. "(The Guard is) being employed in a very useful way. It has freed up hours and hours and hours of Border Patrol time."

    Last year, the governor vetoed a bill by another lawmaker that would have required her to send National Guard troops to the border if she declared a border emergency.

    Napolitano, who at the time was pushing a plan to send troops to the border to assist federal authorities, objected to the bill's requirement that she send troops to the border _ a mandate that she said was an unconstitutional infringement of her powers to command the National Guard.

    At a news conference Thursday, Nichols said last year's bill would have called troops to the border to detain immigrants.

    Told later in the day that a review of last year's bill found no such language, Nichols said the assumption was that the proposal would have put troops at the border to detain immigrants.
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  2. #2

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    And this matters because......

    She have standing orders to watch and run if the heat gets too hot. So more guard on the border is a good thing? Besides Napolitano today said on the radio she's against the legistlation unless the fedgov pays for it. Real leadership.
    Opinions are supposed to be personal.

  3. #3
    Senior Member Rockfish's Avatar
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    An Arizona lawmaker on Thursday proposed giving Gov. Janet Napolitano $10 million to pay for sending National Guard troops to the state's border with Mexico to detain illegal immigrants. Nearly 2,400 National Guard members are already at the state's border to perform support duties that tie up Border Patrol agents, but the soldiers aren't authorized to make arrests. Support duties include monitoring border points, assisting with cargo inspection and operating surveillance cameras.
    Another large waste of money without closing the borders. Yet, here's another big waste:
    http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?nam...wtopic&t=53206
    Join our efforts to Secure America's Borders and End Illegal Immigration by Joining ALIPAC's E-Mail Alerts network (CLICK HERE)

  4. #4

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    Its truely stunning how freakin blind our politician are when it comes to this issue.

    If they'd just build the border barriers, survailed and manned thos barriers properly, and gave the Guard the authority to repell all intruders with any force they deem necessary, the issue of gang violence would greatly diminish and many of our troubles would subside.

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  5. #5
    Administrator Jean's Avatar
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    http://www.azcapitoltimes.com/story.cfm?id=4885

    February 2, 2007
    Top Stories
    GOP: Give Guard bigger role at border
    By Jim Small and Christian Palmer, Arizona Capitol Times


    Steve Gallardo, House minority whip (left), and Rep. Warde Nichols, R-21, take opposing sides on Nichols-sponsored bills defining the National Guards’ role on the border. Photo by Bill CoatesGov. Janet Napolitano is to blame for putting National Guard troops in harm’s way as they patrol Arizona’s southern border, an East Valley lawmaker says, because the governor agreed to give the soldiers a diminished role in exchange for federal funding to pay for the troops.

    But Rep. Warde Nichols, R-21, says Napolitano can correct her mistake by signing a bill he plans to introduce. He told a group of lawmakers and reporters at the Capitol Feb. 1 the bill would provide $10 million to supplement Guardsmen under federal command with approximately 100 soldiers from the Arizona National Guard.


    But unlike the restrained observation-only role dictated to the federally stationed troops, Nichols’ bill would give Napolitano the option of stationing members of the Arizona National Guard as long as their duties are expanded to detain and arrest illegal border crossers.


    “She didn’t have to sign [the federal agreement]; she had other options from the Legislature,” Nichols said. “We’re going to set aside a pile of money... and say these are the strings attached to it.”


    Nichols also filed another bill designed to free guardsmen from lawsuits for damages that occur while soldiers act within the scope of they’re duties.


    Democrats: GOP wants Napolitano to look bad


    But Democrats say the hand wringing over the National Guard by Republicans is little more than an attempt to gain political points and attack Napolitano.


    “The Republicans are obsessed with trying to make the governor look bad,” said House Minority Whip Steve Gallardo, D-13, at the press conference. “They do not let the facts get in the way of bad public policy.”


    The south Phoenix representative said the bill is unnecessary given that 2,000 National Guard troops are currently deployed, and the numbers of illegal immigrants detained has “decreased dramatically,” he said, calling for federal immigration reform and additional Border Patrol agents.


    Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-15, says attempts by Republicans to blame Napolitano during a recent committee hearing failed, as the rules of use of force for Guardsmen, which were signed off on by Napolitano, were also approved by the governors of the three other border states, as well as the governors of the 48 other states and territories and the Department of Defense.


    “It’s very clear this is not about the governor. It’s about the country, and if they don’t like that, they’re going to the wrong place,” she said.


    Testimony from Maj. Gen. Rataczak


    On Jan. 29, the House Homeland Security and Property Rights Committee heard testimony from Maj. Gen. David Rataczak, the adjutant general in charge of the Arizona National Guard, regarding a Jan. 3 incident in which a National Guard patrol was approached by a small number of gunmen in body armor.


    Rataczak told the committee the encounter was nothing more than luck, not an attempt by Mexican coyotes, drug runners or terrorists to test the National Guard’s reaction. The soldiers did not attempt to interfere with the gunmen and the situation ended when the gunmen returned to Mexico.


    “We think… that this was a chance encounter,” he said. “It was not an attempt to probe the National Guard to see what they would do.”


    He speculated that the men were leaving the United States and returning to Mexico with drug money and likely were armed not to confront U.S. forces, but rather rival Mexican gangs.


    The National Guard soldiers didn’t engage the undocumented aliens, or UDAs, Rataczak said, because they aren’t authorized to do so under the federal memorandum of agreement that allows the soldiers to operate along the border. Specifically, Guardsmen cannot arrest, detain or transport illegal aliens. Instead, the National Guard is to assist the Border Patrol, so its sworn officers can do those things.


    “We’re not put there to cordon off the border and stop at all cost anyone coming across,” he said. “That’s not the mission we were given.”


    Rataczak said the Guard performs four missions on the border: aviation, in which it flies helicopters mounted with infrared cameras; engineering, largely consisting of building roads and fences; back office support, which ranges from data entry to repairing vehicles; and entry ID teams, or EIDs, essentially setting up outposts to monitor the border for illegal crossers.


    When the gunmen were first sighted, Rataczak told the committee, the Guardsmen radioed the Border Patrol and relocated to an alternate camp, according to their orders.


    “These people weren’t guarding anything, they weren’t securing anything,” he said. “They were there to observe, take a head count and call Border Patrol.”


    Ultimately, one of the UDAs came within 15 meters of one of the Guardsmen after they had reached the secondary location and set up in a defensive formation.


    The soldier, who had chambered a round in his M-16 rifle when the gunmen were first spotted, though the gun still had its safety on, made no attempt to speak with the armed man or apprehend him. Both men, Rataczak said, had their rifles pointed downward in a non-aggressive manner during the approximately four-second encounter.


    When asked why the soldier made no attempt to detain the man, he said that would have been against the rules of engagement, though had the UDA raised his weapon, the Guardsman would have shot him. He praised the soldier for not creating an international incident.


    “This could have been a significant event,” he said. “Our soldier kept from escalating this event.”


    During the meeting, Republican lawmakers expressed a desire for more latitude for the soldiers to use deadly force.


    “We want them to fire first and ask questions later,” Rep. Ray Barnes, R-7, told Rataczak.


    Likewise, Nichols, chairman of the committee, says the Guardsmen don’t have the tools needed to stop illegal border crossers or protect themselves.


    He said National Guard troops are “on the border with their hands tied.” “They don’t have the proper rules of engagement to do the job I feel they should do.”


    Soldiers, he told Arizona Capitol Times on Feb. 1, can’t fire on UDA combatants until they are fired on first. Though asked about that several times during the committee hearing, Rataczak avoided the question, Nichols says.


    “He kind of jumped around that question quite a bit, but he never really answered it,” Nichols said.


    However, Rataczak told the committee on multiple occasions the soldiers could have used force if they felt the UDAs were aggressors. Simply raising a rifle at the Guardsmen could have triggered a hail of bullets that Rataczak said no doubt would have killed the gunmen. He said he would rather a soldier kill a perceived threat than wait until he is shot at to return fire.


    But he said he didn’t favor the shoot-first mentality that seemed to be an undercurrent of some of the questioning. “I can’t think of a situation where I would tell a soldier to go ahead and shoot away without feeling threatened,” he said.


    At one point in the hearing, Rataczak and Rep. Jerry Weiers, R- 12, had the following exchange:


    Weiers: “At what point can your soldiers defend themselves? Does somebody have to wait for a bullet to go off before somebody can defend themselves?”


    Rataczak: “Had that undocumented pointed that weapon at our soldier, he [the UDA] would not have survived. We train them and we trust them to do the right thing, and he did the right thing. Our soldier kept from escalating that event.”


    Speaker of the House Jim Weiers, who said he saw portions of the hearing, disputed Rataczak’s assessment that the armed men returning to Mexico were not a threat. After all, he said, they had automatic rifles and body armor.


    “When does it become a threat? Do we have to get into motorized armored vehicles?” he said.


    At a Feb. 1 press conference at Wesley Bolin Plaza, Nichols said his bill recalls language Napolitano used last year in a veto message of a bill that would have sent state troops in an active role to the border.


    “She said she is the commander in chief and we respect that and she has the ability to call the National Guard to the border to act in a primary role,” he said. “So we’re going to set aside a pot of money to allow her to do that.”


    “We live in a world today where we are at war with other nations,” said Nichols, who is also drafting an immigration resolution to send to Congress. “We have over 400 miles of border with Mexico. We have the largest nuclear power plant in the nation. We have to be able to secure our southern border so the people of Arizona can sleep at night knowing that we are secure in what we are doing.
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  6. #6

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    Amusing...escilating the event...wth do you deem a full scale invasion to the tune of 4K people a day?

    ridiculous
    Opinions are supposed to be personal.

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