Obama to Send Up to 1,200 Troops to Border - What a Farce!

This statement in the article tells it all. "The soldiers will not directly make arrests of border crossers and smugglers, something they are not trained to do." The problem that the law enforcement officers in Arizona and other states have is that they do not have the personnel to apprehend the illegals that they see cross everyday. This is the reason the use of Drones was not a great idea. Now we will have troops that can only observe and not apprehend. Why bother and why spend the money?

This is a drop in the bucket and done for political reasons and will do little to stem the flow. At least the Arizona law has gotten the attention of Obama and Congress.

Excerpt: President Obama will send up to 1,200 National Guard troops to the Southwest border and seek increased spending on law enforcement there to combat drug smuggling after demands from Republican and Democratic lawmakers that border security be tightened.

The decision was disclosed by a Democratic lawmaker and confirmed by administration officials after Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with Republican senators, several of whom have demanded that troops be placed at the border. The lawmakers learned of the plan after the meeting.

But the move also reflected political pressure in the president’s own party with midterm election campaigns under way and with what is expected to be a tumultuous debate on overhauling immigration law coming up on Capitol Hill.

From 2006 to 2008, President George W. Bush made a larger deployment of Guard troops under a program called Operation Jump Start. At its peak, 6,000 Guard troops at the border helped build roads and fences in addition to backing up law enforcement officers.

Those Guard troops contributed to the arrest of more than 162,000 illegal immigrants, the rescue of 100 people stranded in the desert and the seizure of $69,000 in cash and 305,000 pounds of illicit drugs.

Rick Nelson, a senior fellow who studies domestic security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the additional spending could improve security over the long term but that the National Guard deployment was not sufficient for “an overwhelming change that will change the dynamics on the border.”

“This is a symbolic gesture,” he said. “At the end of the day, the face of border security is still going to be Customs and Border Protection, the law enforcement community. It’s not going to be the National Guard.” Read NYT article here.