National Guard troops in Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California have started arriving on the southern border after President Donald Trump ordered his administration to request beefed up security.
U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis requested 4000 troops be sent to the border to assist the border patrol with immigration enforcement.
Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico quickly responded to the president’s request and sent several hundred troops to the border.
California Governor Jerry Brown on, on the other hand, criticized the president’s strategy but agreed to send 400 troops with several conditions.
Brown instructed California’s National Guard to merely be a support system for immigration enforcement but not to partake in apprehensions.
“Your funding for new staffing will allow the Guard to do what it does best: support operations targeting transnational criminal gangs, human traffickers and illegal firearms and drug smugglers along the border, the coast and throughout the state,” Brown wrote in a letter to the Trump administration.
President Trump had also wanted guard troops to help build the planned border wall but Governor Jerry Brown instructed the California National Guard to not partake in any building efforts.
According to a report by NBC, so far this year the Texas border area of the Rio Grande has seen the most apprehensions of undocumented immigrants. That’s followed by the Tucson and Yuma areas, both in Arizona.