SAN DIEGO (AP) – California Gov. Jerry Brown is crystal clear that his National Guard will help President Trump go after drugs and thugs on the Mexican border, but not immigrants. Drawing that line may be hazy.
Brown’s pledge of 400 troops allows the president to boast that governors in all four border states back his mission to send the Guard on its third large-scale deployment since 2006. It helped bring commitments from Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas to about 2,400 troops – above the low end of Trump’s target of sending 2,000 to 4,000 troops to the border shared by the four states.
The Democratic governor, who cast his decision as a welcome infusion of federal support to fight transnational criminal gangs and drug and firearms smugglers, broke from his Republican counterparts from the three other states by insisting that his troops will have nothing to do with immigration enforcement.
But some experts were skeptical that Brown will be able to force his vision of the mission on California’s Guard members participating in Trump’s operation.
“I think it’ll be very difficult for the California National Guard to be able to walk that fine line because those things in the field are indistinguishable, said Eric Olson, deputy director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America program, who specializes in organized crime and security. “It’s not like someone crossing the border says, ‘I’m carrying drugs.’ How can you tell?”