On Monday, Governor Rick Perry has stated that he is deploying around a thousand National Guard personnel to the Texas-Mexico border over the next month as he pursues his end of the campaign to stave off the criminals that Republican state leaders have been blaming for the increased number of unaccompanied minors and families entering the country illegally. Perry, who has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration's efforts to the border crisis has also said that the state of Texas has a responsibility to act after the supposed "lip service" the federal government has been providing in response to the undocumented immigrant issue. Fox News said Perry is mulling to run for the second time as president in 2016.
Perry's plans had incited reservations from critics, who had suggested that Texas was militarizing its local communities and that the additional resources the state governor is planning to use does not justify in terms of crime data along the border. Nonetheless, the news outlet said Perry has rejected all concerns about his plans, which would cost his state around $12 million monthly. Texas Adjutant General John Nichols had also clarified that the troops will not be detaining people unless the National Guard would ask. The only time the federal government would pick up the tab is if Obama, who has already been beleaguered with handling the border crisis, would issue an order.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest has said about Perry's plans, "Gov. Perry has referred repeatedly to his desire to make a symbolic statement to the people of Central America that the border is closed. And he thinks that the best way to do that is to send 1,000 National Guard troops to the border. It seems to me that a much more powerful symbol would be the bipartisan passage of legislation that would actually make a historic investment in border security and send an additional 20,000 personnel to the border."
Fox News said that National Guard soldiers had been used in previous border deployments to provide supporting roles, like administration and intelligence gathering, as Border Patrol expanded its ranks. Although they do not have arrest powers, the National Guard had participated in operations against counter-drug trafficking on the border.
