National Guard are at the U.S.-Mexico border … again

For the second time since 2006, U.S. National Guardsmen are on the nation’s southern border, providing a false sense of security to scared Americans who, it is becoming apparent, don’t want unauthorized immigrants in the United States, but will hire them, on occasion, to do work U.S. citizens seem to eschew.

The Arizona Daily Star reports from Nogales that 504 of the 560 guardsmen deployed to the border through June, are keeping lonely watches, in four-person teams, and living in isolated tents along the border, 24/7. Though they carry M16 rifles, and can use them in certain conditions, among them self-defense, their primary task is to report suspicious activity to the U.S. Border Patrol.

The guardsmen, many of whom returned recently from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, will call the Border Patrol who will purportedly capture the culprits or send unmanned drones to photograph them, for reasons that remain unclear.

The wisdom of ordering 500 guardsmen to pitch tents in the sweltering heat of the Arizona desert, and to suffer from seemingly interminable boredom, also remains a mystery. The fact that they cannot make apprehensions did not escape Arizona Sen. Russell Pearce, who wrote Arizona’s controversial immigration legislation, SB 1070.

“We send them overseas in harm’s way but we don’t let them defend our own borders in a proper manner?” he complained bitterly.

Apparently, just as he demonstrated when he authored his controversial state bill, Pearce showed that his ignorance of federalism and federal law is not minuscule.

The Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law passed after the end of Reconstruction to specifically limit the powers of the federal government’s use of the military for law enforcement on U.S. soil, prevents using uniformed military personnel for domestic police work.

This writer recalls Operation Jump Start between 2006 and 2008, in which 6,000 guardsmen were stationed along the border. They were said to be “improving border infrastructure,” building roads and serving as observers.

The only thing I ever saw them do was to wave vehicles past border crossings and inland immigration checkpoints.

So, over two years, $1.2 billion was spent, in large part to direct traffic.

Photo by: Jim Greenhill