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Bush border plan for Guard hits snag
Deployments are running behind schedule; some governors reluctant to send troops

Susan Carroll
Republic Tucson Bureau
Jul. 8, 2006 12:00 AM

Logistical and bureaucratic snags have delayed the deployment of National Guard troops along the Southwestern border, leaving Arizona with little support so far from other states and putting a crimp in President Bush's security plan.

Nearly two months after Bush's announcement of plans to station 6,000 Guard personnel along the border with Mexico, U.S. Border Patrol officials said 898 Guard soldiers are actually working in direct support of agents in the four border states, freeing up 173 agents, about 1.5 percent of the patrol's workforce.

So far, the deployments have had "no impact at all" on arrests, mainly because of the long delay in getting troops from outside the border states prepared to deploy, said Maria Valencia, a Border Patrol spokeswoman in Washington, D.C.

"Once they deploy more forces, I'm sure we'll see the impact, but right now it's too early to tell," Valencia said.

Some federal and state officials are concerned that the National Guard deployment hasn't gone according to plan but say that they're confident adding troops at the border will help improve security. Defense and homeland security experts questioned whether the lack of troop commitments from many states and the short deployment of some Guard units will hurt the effort.

Christine Wormuth, a defense expert with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic & International Studies, said the public seemed to have the misperception that the president could decide to dispatch thousands of Guard soldiers on the border and make it happen with "just a snap of his fingers."


The original plan
In May, military officials set an ambitious deadline to have 2,500 soldiers on the border by July 1 and fill 6,000 National Guard slots by August. The troops would serve as a stopgap until 2008, while thousands of Border Patrol agents would be recruited and trained to replace them.

Initially, Guard troops were supposed to arrive starting June 1 to work with the Border Patrol, but the first batch arrived two weeks late, Valencia said. The deployments were delayed by red tape, as state officials signed intergovernmental agreements. Some Guard officials also ran into logistical problems in small border towns like Deming, N.M., where they had to delay the dispatch of 50 out-of-state soldiers because they had no place to sleep.

In mid-June, Gov. Janet Napolitano deployed about 300 Arizona National Guard soldiers to the state's border, including about 150 to 200 who work directly with the Border Patrol, according to state Guard officials. The four border states combined deployed about 1,400 Guard members to the border, but the federal government has had trouble finding other states that can spare large contingents of troops.

Arizona, the busiest illegal-crossing corridor in the nation, has seen little in the way of outside reinforcements. Today, roughly 150 soldiers from the New York National Guard are expected to arrive in Arizona for 15-day training stints. Previously, the only out-of-state troops assigned here were a contingent of 55 from Utah, scheduled before Bush's announcement of plans to send the Guard to the Mexican border.

Jeanine L'Ecuyer, Napolitano's spokeswoman, said the governor never expected the National Guard to meet the ambitious deadline set out in May, saying it seemed logistically impossible.

"Would the governor like to see more people here? Absolutely," L'Ecuyer said. "But she never expected in any material way that the number would be met on time."


States reluctant to help
The president's plan, dubbed Operation Jumpstart, federally funds the Guard deployments but leaves control of the troops up to state governors. In the midst of wildfire and hurricane seasons, and with troops overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, some governors from across the country have been reluctant to send large groups to the border.

The shortfall has caught the attention of Congress, said Sen. Jon Kyl, who said more Guard volunteers are needed along the border.

"A lot of states are not sending them," Kyl told The Arizona Republic on Friday. "We're not up to the complement that the president authorized, which is 6,000. We're not even close to that right now. There are several that haven't sent people because they say they can't spare them."

About 2,800 troops are already in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas, but the bulk of them are either undergoing training or in administrative roles and not necessarily based along the border helping agents, according to National Guard Bureau statistics. Of those, 898 are "forward deployed," which the National Guard defined as working directly in a support capacity for the Border Patrol, said Lt. Col. Mike Milford, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau.

The Guard members do everything from monitoring safety on shooting ranges to manning video surveillance systems and building walls, but they do not make arrests of undocumented immigrants, officials said.


Future deployments
White House spokesman Blair Jones referred comment on the deployment delays to Mike Friel, a spokesman for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol's parent agency.

Friel said the gradual ramp-up of National Guard troops will help the Border Patrol, which made more than 1.1 million arrests along the Southern border last year, most in Arizona.

"The fact is that having the National Guard on the border is really an acceleration of our national strategy, and that's aimed at gaining control of our border," he said.

The rush to get the Guard on the border by the deadlines set by Bush has overshadowed a critical issue, one Homeland Security analyst said: Just how long the troops will stay.

National Guard Bureau officials said they could not provide specifics on the length of troops' deployments.

Some Guard members have volunteered for longer missions lasting up to a year, including some from Arizona, but others, like those from New York, will head to the border for 15 days of training and then return home.

"Six thousand isn't enough to make a difference, especially when you send them down there for two weeks at a time," said retired Col. Randall Larsen, founder of the consulting firm Homeland Security Associates. "With two weeks, what are you really going to get out of them?"



Reporter Robbie Sherwood contributed to this article.