Obama Sends 1,200 National Guard Troops to the Border

by Danny Rangel · 2010-05-26 07:25:00 UTC
Topics:

President Obama has struck a deal with Congressional Republicans that will send up to 1,200 National Guard Troops to the Mexican border. The President will also ask Congress for $500 million to pay for additional border patrol agents, investigators, and prosecutors.

Government officials insist that the National Guard troops will work only to supplement ongoing efforts by federal border security authorities to secure the border from illegal transport of goods and personnel over the border into the U.S. In the meantime, more border patrol agents will be recruited and trained in order to eventually relieve the deployment of National Guard troops.

Senator John McCain and Senator Jon Kyl, both of Arizona, met with the president shortly before news broke of the additional National Guard troops, presumably as a precursor to the actual announcement of the increase in border security. Senator McCain, facing a tough primary challenge from a fiercely anti-immigrant challenger, has recently become a more unfriendly voice on immigration, and has repeatedly urged the president and members of Congress to pass more stringent measures to combat illegal immigration.

By all accounts, it seems that the President, knowing full well of both the demand for immigration reform and of the limited chance of a comprehensive immigration bill passing during a national election year, decided in favor of a more incremental, give-and-take approach to the problem.

However, such a deal may leave both sides of the immigration debate unhappy. "It's simply not enough," Sen. McCain exclaimed on the Senate floor in reaction to the deal, going on to recommend the assignment of at least 6,000 troops to the southern border.

Of course, this move comes after Arizona's SB 1070 and the wave of opposition and controversy that has followed the bill's passage. No doubt, the fierce debate over immigration that has recently overtaken the national airwaves made its impact on the moves in Washington today. Although immigration rights activists are still formulating their response to this new development, the reaction to the enforcement-first, enforcement-only approach is sure to be overwhelmingly critical.

Photo credit: jim.greenhill

Danny Rangel is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who has worked for the International Rescue Committee and MEND.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Frog Puppet Thinks Reading and Arizona SB 1070 Is Fun
NEXT STORY:
Community Members Fight Detention of High School Graduate with a Mental Disability

COMMENTS (3)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.