Washington – With his proposal to send 6,000 National Guard troops to temporarily help secure the border, President Bush vowed Monday to stanch the waves of illegal immigrants pouring into the United States.
But several congressional Republicans, former administration officials and Border Patrol agents warned that the Guard plan, by itself, seemed to amount to little more than a short-term fix to one of the nation’s most intractable problems.
And some questioned whether the Bush administration was truly committed to longer-term solutions, noting that White House officials had failed in recent years to meet the administration’s own goals for increasing the number of border security agents and beds in immigration detention centers.
Under the plan, teams of National Guard troops would work on the border for shifts of two to three weeks, providing logistical, surveillance and civil-engineering support to Border Patrol agents who would retain sole responsibility for apprehending illegal immigrants.
The initial commitment of National Guard troops would last for a year; after that, the force would be scaled back and replaced with newly hired Border Patrol agents, with the goal of hiring 6,000 more agents by 2008, for a total of more than 18,000.
Janice Kephart, who served as counsel to the Sept. 11 commission, said the National Guard had played a useful supporting role to the Border Patrol in the past, helping to build fences and in providing equipment and intelligence assistance.
But expanding that sort of assistance is not nearly enough on its own, she said.
“It’s a temporary bolstering that will give a false sense of security that will ultimately be removed in a year,” said Kephart, who studied the nation’s border security system for the commission.
“The National Guard has always been there, and unless they have a plan for using them that is really viable and strong, I think we’ll end up with minimal help out of this,” she said. “I don’t see a strategy here.”
C. Stewart Verdery Jr., who was assistant secretary for border security policy in the Department of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005, said he thought the National Guard would help by giving border agents more time to focus on apprehending illegal immigrants.
“Anything that could be done to keep the agents on the front line doing their specialized enforcement activity is a good thing,” he said.
But he said that would in turn create a rising demand for detention beds, a demand that seemed unlikely to be met.
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens called Bush’s plan for the Guard “appropriate,” adding: “I have been assured … by the leadership of the Guard that reasonable calls for assistance to help secure our borders can be fulfilled without compromising the Guard’s responsibilities in Colorado or overseas.”