Dozens protest in El Paso over border troops plan
Dozens protest in El Paso over border troops plan
By Alicia A. Caldwell / The Associated Press
Posted: 05/27/2010 03:33:40 PM MDT
EL PASO - About 100 people protested President Barack Obama's plan to deploy about 1,200 National Guard troops to the Mexican border Thursday morning.
At the El Paso County courthouse, protesters lined up with handmade signs and chanted in English and Spanish, shouting "No National Guard on the border, no need to bring more disorder."
Several people also carried signs declaring, "Remember Esequiel Hernandez," referring to an 18-year-old goat herder who was shot and killed in 1997 by Marines working a counter-drug mission in the West Texas border town of Redford.
Obama's plan is similar to one enacted by former President George W. Bush. In 2006 Bush ordered about 6,000 troops to assist the U.S. Border Patrol while it hired and trained thousand of agents.
Like the troops under Bush's plan, soldiers deployed to the border this time won't enforce immigration laws. Instead, they will work on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support. The troops eventually will be replaced by Border Patrol and Customs agents.
Fernando Garcia of Border Network For Human Rights, the immigrant advocacy group that organized Thursday's protest, said sending troops to the border is a purely political decision.
Politicians, he said, have "created an artificial reality and debated it with artificial arguments. The National Guard are soldiers ... and they are trained for war."
Garcia added that there's little evidence of a spillover from Mexico's deadly drug cartel war, which has left more than 23,000 people dead since late 2006.
Police in El Paso, across the Rio Grande from violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, have investigated one homicide this year while Mexican authorities across the river have handled more than 1,000 killings.
Debra Kelly, a retired flight attendant, joined Thursday's protest. She said she fears the deployment is the first step toward militarization of the border. "That's how it starts," she said of plans for the Guard to concentrate on intelligence and surveillance. "But once you start militarizing the border, you are going to have a Gaza Strip."
http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_15176067
