Brown to send additional National Guard troops — some to the Mexico border — to fight gangs, human traffickers and gun and drug smugglers
By Casey Tolan, Katy Murphy and Tatiana Sanchez
The Mercury News
April 12, 2018
After a week of suspense, and after months of blasting President Trump’s immigration policies, Gov. Jerry Brown said Wednesday that he would accept federal funding to add 400 California National Guard troops to a program that targets gangs, human traffickers and gun and drug smugglers.
Brown’s closely watched decision comes after the Trump administration asked border state governors last week to send National Guard contingents to help defend the border following reports that a caravan of Central American migrants was headed to the U.S. Republican Governors in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona have already started deploying extra troops.
While Brown’s move might seem like a U-turn from his earlier resistance to Trump, it’s not clear how many of the California guardsmen and women will actually end up at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The location of Guard personnel – and number specifically working in support of operations along the border, the coast and elsewhere in the state – will be dictated by the needs on the ground,” Evan Westrup, a Brown spokesman, said Wednesday.
The state’s program to combat transnational crime – gangs, drugs, guns and human trafficking — is currently staffed by 250 personnel statewide, including 55 at the California-Mexico border, according to Brown’s letter.
“Let’s be crystal clear on the scope of this mission,” Brown wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday. “This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life. And the California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws.”
Trump has said that he wants as many as 4,000 guard members to assist Border Patrol agents until a wall is built.
As California and the federal government have sparred over immigration policy, Brown has faced political pressure in the Golden State to deny Trump’s request. All of the major Democratic candidates for governor said they would turn down the ask.
Individual governors direct their state’s National Guard troops, although the president can federalize the guard and take control in some situations.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the administration was “glad to see California Governor Jerry Brown work with the administration and send members of the National Guard to help secure the southern border.”
Perhaps surprisingly, advocates on both sides of the immigration debate had words of support for Brown’s move.
“I appreciate that Governor Brown has designed a clear and limited mission focused on real public safety threats — not phantom threats posed by women and children fleeing violence,” said State Sen. Kevin de León, who’s challenging Sen. Dianne Feinstein from the left this year, although he added he would have preferred to send the guard troops to assist hurricane recovery in Puerto Rico.
Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the pro-restrictive immigration law Federation for American Immigration Reform, said his group also appreciated the move.
“Part of the reason why we’re encountering this surge of large numbers of illegal aliens is because of policies like those in California that promise people that they’ll be protected if they come to the U.S. illegally,” Mehlman said. “Maybe (Brown is) trying to demonstrate that he hasn’t completely disassociated California with the immigration policies in the U.S.”
He suggested the move was the result of several Southern California cities rebelling against the state’s sanctuary policies in recent weeks.
Westrup said that the governor’s decision to deploy 400 troops is “consistent” with the number requested by the federal government, but didn’t say whether federal officials had requested they be assigned to fight transnational crime or to a different assignment.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
In his letter, Brown declared that “there is no massive wave of migrants pouring into California,” contrary to assertions by some of Trump’s supporters.
In 2006, President George W. Bush asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to deploy California national guard troops in defense of the Mexican border. Schwarzenegger signed off on sending 1,000 troops, but denied Bush’s requests for additional manpower. He also sent 224 troops to the border in 2010 after a request by President Barack Obama.
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