Thread: N.M. governor withdraws most National Guard troops from border

These politicians who want open borders need to be sent down there to LIVE in a tent for 30 days by themselves with no guards!

Caravan Migrants Stalled at Texas Border Eye Other Routes

U.S. to boost troops at border as Lujan Grisham pulls out Guard members

• By Andrew Oxford | aoxford@sfnewmexican.com

• Feb 6, 2019 Updated 8 min ago

The federal government is sending more troops to the U.S. border with Mexico just as Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham pulls back New Mexico National Guard personnel from the state’s southern frontier.

But the Department of Defense is not saying whether any of 3,750 additional troops headed to the border will come to New Mexico.

“The specific units and locations are still being finalized,” Maj. Mark Lazane said Wednesday.

“We hope to release that information when it becomes available, but we aren’t able to do so at this time.”

The move, which President Donald Trump touted in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, will raise the number of military personnel on the border to around 4,350.

The federal government sent soldiers to the border just a few days before last year’s election following a request from Customs and Border Protection for help with logistics, transportation and engineering.

The additional forces will help with what the Department of Defense described in a statement Sunday as mobile surveillance and the placement of about 150 miles of concertina wire — coils of barbed or razor wire — between ports of entry.

New Mexico was not included when the federal government sent the first wave of troops to the border late last year.

And that was just as well for some border residents who said a military presence did not seem necessary along the state’s sparsely populated stretch of the frontier.

But large groups of asylum-seekers have turned to Antelope Wells during recent months, overwhelming the small and isolated border outpost nestled in the Bootheel.

Lujan Grisham said Tuesday she is keeping a contingent of more than a dozen National Guard troops in Hidalgo County.

And on Wednesday, the governor said she also will send public health officials and personnel from the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to help in the area.

But the issue, she emphasized, is a humanitarian one.


Lujan Grisham is pulling back most of the National Guard troops her predecessor, Susana Martinez, sent to the border last year as Trump sought to build a military presence in the region that could step up assistance to the Border Patrol.

Lujan Grisham told reporters Wednesday that federal officials had given her little justification for keeping the troops along much of New Mexico’s more than 200-mile stretch of the frontier.

“The only justification, quite frankly, they gave me was that having the National Guard deployed was good for the economy,” she said. “… That’s not the role of the National Guard.”

Some residents of the sparsely populated Bootheel have raised concerns that the area has been poorly secured for too long.

“This isn’t new that those remote ranchers have some risk. They do,” Lujan Grisham said. “They absolutely do. So, where has Border Patrol been over the last few decades?”

While Trump has called for a wall, Lujan Grisham said she would prefer security measures suited to particular areas and basic aid to law enforcement like road maintenance.

“Give us some investments that deal with some of these remote areas,” she said, “including more bollard fencing and barrier protections based on what that community tells us will make a difference in conjunction with Border Patrol.”

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/new...debc6cc08.html

Send our military tanks and bulldozers and let our military start to clear the path and brush for the barriers.

This would help the Border Patrol where there is thick brush and provide them with a clear trail.

Bulldoze a 1 mile buffer zone where we can.

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