May 15, 2006 – 8:21 p.m.
In December of 2005, Fox News talking head Bill O’Reilly floated an unlikely — even brash — idea to the Homeland Security secretary to seal off the porous southwest border.
“Why don’t you put the National Guard on the border to back up the border patrol and stop the bleeding, and then start to increase the Border Patrol, the high-tech and all of that?” O’Reilly asked.
“Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission,” Chertoff told O’Reilly. “I mean, the fact of the matter is the border is a special place. There are special challenges that are faced there.”
Chertoff added that that it would take a huge amount of National Guard troops, that they would need new training. But couldn’t the National Guard pull it off, O’Reilly asked?
“I think it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem,” Chertoff said. “Unless you would be prepared to leave those people in the National Guard day and night for month after month after month, you would eventually have to come to grips with the challenge in a more comprehensive way.”
But it appears that O’Reilly’s battle cry, and that of much of the anti-immigration lobby that has influenced the immigration reform debate in Congress, has had an effect on the Bush administration. Despite plans for a substantial technology and equipment procurement — SBInet — and proposed increases in Border Patrol personnel, President Bush has announced plans to supplement Border Patrol agents with National Guard personnel as part of a $1.9 billion border security upgrade.
The National Guard troops, which will stand at up 6,000 strong for the next year, will absorb surveillance and infrastructure work from the overburdened Border Patrol. President Bush also proposed a huge swell in the Border Patrol — a total of 6,000 new agents — by the end of 2008. Additionally, 1,000 Border Patrol agents currently in clerical positions will be shifted to new assignments in detention and apprehension of illegal aliens.
But the new placement of the National Guard troops marks a radical departure from the Department of Homeland Security’s previous pronouncement on border security. As Chertoff mentioned, the troops will stand alongside trained, experienced Border Patrol agents. Can they do it?
DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen distanced the new policy from Chertoff’s earlier comments, saying by phone Monday that the National Guard troops would easily assimilate into the border protection apparatus.
“What we’re using them for are things they have been trained to do, and have used them for in other circumstances,” Agen said.
The military has had a role in border security in recent years, but on a very small scale. Joint Task Force North, a military unit affiliated with U.S. Northern Command, has lent its resources to the Border Patrol’s efforts. State governors in Arizona and Texas have dispatched National Guard units from their states to the border as well.
“As a stop-gap measure it’s fine, just like you send National Guard in during disasters,” James Jay Carafano, a homeland defense expert at the Heritage Foundation said by phone. But in the long-term, Carafano does not think the strategy of using National Guard supports is sustainable.
“There’s better uses for these resources, and there are also better ways for dealing with the problem in the long term,” he said, suggesting the augmentation of Border Patrol assets to address gaps on the United States’ 2,700-mile border with Mexico.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman
“It’s not just enough to say we’ll use the National Guard. We want to see how many there are going to be, how well trained they’re going to be for this. I mean, they’re very, very well trained as soldiers. They’re very well trained, even, for natural disasters like earthquakes and forest fires,” he said Monday on Fox News. “But, again, as far as how they are going to be coordinated and adapted into working with the Border Patrol, the president is going to have to lay that out, or he’s going to have to lay out some kind of a timeline” (See related story, CQ Homeland Security, 4/11/06).
The SBInet procurement, which could result in a contract award by the end of the summer, could address some of what would be the National Guard’s role.
Contractors have said they expect that private firms will supply manpower as a part of the procurement, and detention and removal operations are often cited as an area in which the private sector could fortify a weak link by helping to transport deported aliens back to their home countries.
But, as the White House indicated Monday, the National Guard troops may also take on surveillance responsibilities for the Border Patrol. With that area comes another risk: the exhaustion of National Guard troops with surveillance and intelligence expertise.
“When you look at the types of activities that the guard will be doing, those are skill sets that already in high-demand overseas,” Christine E. Wormuth, a Center for Strategic and International Studies defense analyst said, pointing to National Guard deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. “It’s not like any Tom, Dick or Harry National Guard soldier could do that.”
The National Guard stands at roughly 350,000 troops — far above the number of troops that would be deployed on the border. But Wormuth suggested that, with multiple deployments, the roughly 6,000 slated troops could be multiplied two-fold or even four-fold. That could begin to take a toll on National Guard recruitment.
“Politically, I would think there wouldn’t be a desire to go back to the well of people that have served [overseas],” she said, citing the “stressing” effect of multiple deployments. “What does this do for retention? It’s already a very challenging recruiting environment.”
The troops would have greater flexibility if they were deployed by state governors, rather than the president, under Title 32 of the U.S. Code. Legal scholars believe that provision circumvents the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, a law limiting the use of military personnel for law enforcement.
Even so, the American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement Monday invoking “the spirit of the Posse Comitatus Act.”
“Our government and people have long recognized that federal law enforcement officers are the best equipped and trained to deal with these kinds of civilian law enforcement needs,” Anthony D. Romero, ACLU’s executive director, said. “Soldiers are trained to kill the enemy, and they lack the training to conduct proper law enforcement.”
Agen said the troops would be deployed “with the cooperation of state governors,” but declined to elaborate further on who would directly deploy them.
Patrick Yoest can be reached at pyoest@cq.com.