Thread: Will pulling border Guard weaken security?

Published: Dec. 30, 2011 Updated: 8:28 a.m.

BY DAVID WHITING
COLUMNIST
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

While many of us snuggled in bed stuffed with Christmas dinner, California National Guard Sgt. Chris Luzader worked.

Sure, it was dark, cold and windy along the Chula Vista sector. But he and his fellow Guard had a mission: Protect the U.S. border.

As the California National Guard Entry Identification Team takes position on an Otay Mountain ridge, Capt. Gerald Kim, right, briefs Master Sgt. Gina Cali, left and Staff Sgt. Chris Luzader, center. Kim is a UCI graduate, Cali an Orange resident and Luzader from Lake Forest.

JEBB HARRIS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Before dawn on Monday, Dec. 26, they'd helped the Border Patrol identify and detain four people.

Still, it's unlikely that Luzader, sergeant first class, and his fellow men and women in uniform will be at the border next Christmas. Heck, it's unlikely they'll be there in eight weeks.

Amidst the hubbub of the Afghanistan pull-out and holiday shopping, the White House announced it's withdrawing 900 of the 1,200 Guardsmen along the U.S.-Mexico border.

I was with the Guard at the border six months ago. And when I heard the news, I immediately thought of a giant bat.
• • •
Instead of boots on the ground, the new role of the greatly reduced Guard is to help with what some call "boots in the air."

Drones as well as sophisticated surveillance helicopters equipped with sensors that can peer six miles into Mexico will replace the troops.

In making the announcement, the departments of Defense and Homeland Security jointly state, "The air assets will reduce enforcement response time, enabling Border Patrol officers to quickly move from one location to another."

I'm no military expert, so I'm confused why these "assets" weren't deployed earlier. Don't get me wrong. I like air support. But I also don't understand how choppers and drones can do the same work of trained veterans on the ground.

Consider that Luzader, a Lake Forest husband with two adult daughters and a 5-year-old girl, patrolled the wilds of the San Ysidro Mountains for a year. Before that, he served two tours in Iraq with the Guard. Before that, he was a Marine during Desert Storm.

Now, Luzader and hundreds of his fellow Guard face unemployment.

The Department of Homeland Security describes things differently: "The deployment of these new (Defense Department) technical assets, along with the additional DHS personnel on the ground, will enable (defense) to reduce the number of National Guard troops at the Southwest border while enhancing border security."
At least Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler tipped his hat to the Guard: "The National Guard has acted as a critical bridge while the administration brought new assets online."

But others are less confident about the impact of the Guard reductions.

• • •
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), says, "If the Obama administration's goal is border security, their actions undermine their objective.

"The administration's decision to draw down the National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexico border makes an already porous border worse."
Smith echoes other critics adding, "The Government Accountability Office has found that only 44 percent of the Southwest border is under the operational control of the Border Patrol.

"It doesn't make sense to take National Guard troops off the border when less than half of the border is secure. We should keep guardsmen on the ground until the Border Patrol can gain operational control of the majority of the U.S.-Mexico border."

When I contacted Luzader, he declined to discuss strategy, tactics or Washington's decisions. But he agreed to talk about Dec. 24 and 25, when the four people were caught.

While most parents were putting out cookies for Santa, Luzader's team helped apprehend another half-dozen people.
Experts had predicted little to no activity Christmas Eve.

• • •
In June, things were pretty quiet when I was with the Guard in the San Ysidro Mountains – until the sun dropped toward the horizon.

In the fading light, Master Sgt. Gina Cali, daughter of a Marine, resident of Orange and a Los Angeles Sheriff's deputy, scanned the hillsides with a pair of high-tech binoculars.

She let me borrow the binoculars. Below and less than a quarter-mile away, two men in Mexico approached the border. One wore a backpack. As they neared the towering fence, they abruptly turned around.

Standing on a ridgeline, Cali explained that deterrence is a critical role for the Guard and that they make themselves as visible as possible.

Capt. Gerald Kim, a UCI graduate with a degree in criminology, sat in a Jeep moving a toggle that controlled an infrared camera. The cartels call such devices "devil's eyes."

Suddenly, the radio crackled. "We have a confirmed ultra-light."

Kim worked the camera until something that resembled a giant bat appeared on a black and white screen. "Got him."

But the ultra-light plane dipped behind a ridge. Apparently, the pilot ditched his load and fled to Mexico.

Did the Guard scare off the pilot?

It's unlikely we'll ever know considering what the cartel does with drug mules who lose shipments.

• • •
The unknowns of securing the border have always bedeviled bean counters.

In making its December announcement, Homeland Security proudly noted there are now a record number of Border Patrol officers. In 2007, there were 1,700 border agents in the San Diego sector. When I visited in June, that figure had jumped to 2,500 agents – not including Guardsmen such as Luzader.

Following a similar move by President Bush, the Obama administration supplemented the Border Patrol in 2010 with the 1,200 National Guard. That figure included 260 Guard devoted just to the San Diego sector.

As the Guard draws down, the number of border agents in the future remains vague. But it appears there certainly will be fewer boots on the ground.

In justifying the Guard reduction, Homeland Security pointed to a 50 percent drop in arrests the last few years. But I wonder if a reduction in arrests is necessarily a reduction in crime.

More importantly, will beefed up aerial reconnaissance make up for the reduction in Guard?

Only smugglers like the bat pilot can tell us.

And they're not talking.

http://oneoldvet.com/

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/b...-security.html

The policy of pulling out the already highly trained and combat hardened US troops from Iraq and refusing to use them to protect the dangerous and porous US border with Mexico at this crucial time when it is now needed more than at any other time since the Alamo proves this government is NOT serious about not only border control, but also NOT serious about TERRORISTS infiltrating through those open corridors also.

Relying on a drone to interdict, arrest, interrogate, and process illegal aliens coming in from Mexico also proves that this government's policy of spying on it's own legal and native-born citizens with the "If you see something, say something" communist doctrine is evidence of this unconstitutional dogma being allowed to increase it's control over the legal citizens while protecting the illegal ones.