Easley deploys 300 Guard soldiers to border

  RALEIGH (AP) – Gov. Mike Easley deployed 300 National Guard troops Fri*day to patrol the U.S.-Mexi*can border, complying with a request from the U.S. De*partment of Defense, his of*fice said.
  Easley urged fellow gover*nors to follow his lead.
  “Federal efforts to secure our borders do not just bene*fit the border states,” Easley wrote in a letter to his col*leagues. “These security measures affect our entire c o u n t r y.” The soldiers are mem*bers of the Fayetteville*based 252nd Combined Arms Battalion, the Guard said. They will work along the border in New Mexico from July 22 until Aug. 5 as part of yearly training that had been planned for Fort Bra g g.
  In May, after President Bush’s request to send up to 6,000 National Guard troops to the nation’s southern bor*der, a spokesman in the gov*ernor’s office questioned the president’s policies on the Guard, noting the division’s ever-expanding but unde*fined role in the military, with frequent tours in Iraq and increasing domestic du*t ies.
 
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