Thread: One year later, Guard troops along 4 border states to be cut

One year later, Guard troops along 4 border states to be cut

Web Posted: 07/13/2007 10:45 PM CDT

Mariano Castillo
Express-News Border Bureau

LAREDO — President Bush's strategy for bolstering border security by sending 6,000 National Guard troops to aid the Border Patrol turns a year old this weekend. With that anniversary, the process of drawing down the number of troops here also begins.
By Sept. 1, the number of soldiers assigned to Operation Jump Start in all four border states will be halved, to 3,000, National Guard Capt. Dick Jinks said.

The reduction was planned from the beginning, Jinks said.

"We actually started a couple of weeks ago," said Jinks, spokesman for the operation. "We stopped replacement operations in anticipation of these numbers."

The idea behind Operation Jump Start was to fortify the number of boots on the ground while thousands of new Border Patrol agents were being trained, he said.

National Guard troops were not allowed to make immigration arrests, but freed up more border agents for the field by taking over camera rooms and secretarial jobs and helping man checkpoints.

Both the National Guard and Border Patrol praised the first phase of the two-year program as a success, even if the program had suffered some black eyes, including three guardsmen charged with using their positions to smuggle undocumented immigrants past a Border Patrol checkpoint.

The trio, based in Laredo, are accused of using a National Guard-leased van to transport the human cargo, communicating through text messages and getting through the checkpoint by pretending to be on official business.

The accused soldiers — Sgt. Julio Cesar Pacheco, Sgt. Clarence Hodge Jr. and Pfc. Jose Rodrigo Torres — pleaded not guilty Thursday.

"There have been human beings being human beings," Jinks said. "But we track that and we understand that these things happen, so we have to take the bad with the good."

He added: "Our customer is Customs and Border Protection and everything we've heard from them has been positive."

In Texas, the number of guardsmen will be reduced from about 1,500 to 900.

The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, N.M., has been pushed to its limits with the influx of Border Patrol trainees, but has coped with the load.

Since October of last year, 230 new agents have been assigned to the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol sector alone, spokesman Oscar Saldaña said.

His sector was prepared for the downsizing of its National Guard companions.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/ ... cc981.html

Could we expect anything else from this (IMO) anti-American president!!!

WORTHLESS!!!!