:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/adn/O3ALK2ZFXGVESWILGRURJUBYYE.jpg "“No military training value”: Chief of the National Guard criticizes troop deployment to the US-Mexico border")
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WASHINGTON — The head of the National Guard Bureau said Tuesday that stationing National Guard members on the U.S.-Mexico border is detrimental to their military mission and leads to underutilization of troops.
About 2,500 National Guard members are assisting U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in monitoring the border crossings. Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the force’s commander, said their time and effort could be better spent elsewhere.
“There is no military training value to what we are doing,” he told the Senate Budget Committee during a hearing on the National Guard budget. “I think this time could be better spent strengthening our defenses against our adversaries.”
U.S. troops have been supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s work on the southwest border since 2018, when then-President Donald Trump deployed units to “stop the flow of deadly drugs and other contraband, gang members and other criminals, and illegal aliens.”
President Joe Biden has kept the troops in place since taking office in 2021, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin extended the mission through September last year.
National Guard members serve the U.S. Northern Command, which is responsible for the defense of the American continent and Alaska. There are additional National Guard members deployed to the border by governors and are under state control.
Hokanson said he knows the National Guard helps the Border Patrol fill in staffing gaps so agents can focus on detention and case processing, but for many soldiers, these deployments are personally frustrating.
“They might as well be sent to Kuwait or abroad because they’ll be separated from their families,” he said. “They’ll be carrying out missions there that aren’t directly applicable to their military skills.”
The active-duty National Guard members sent to the border by the federal government are not permitted to participate in civilian law enforcement activities and are largely limited to administrative and logistical duties, including warehousing, reconnaissance and surveillance support.
Border security has dominated conversations among lawmakers on Capitol Hill in recent months and has emerged as a top issue ahead of November’s presidential election.
Senator Jon Tester of Montana, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Defense, on Tuesday criticized the Biden administration for its “failed” immigration policy and questioned the impact of the continued deployment of National Guard troops at the border.
Others have also expressed doubts about the viability of this strategy. Air Force General Glen VanHerck, former commander of NORTHCOM, said the troop deployment should only be temporary.
“I think long term, this is not a permanent Department of Defense mission,” VanHerck told lawmakers in 2022. “We need to fully fund and resource (the Department of Homeland Security) so it can accomplish its mission, and the (Department of Defense) should be deployed in extreme times to support the border mission.”
Former President George W. Bush called on the National Guard to help secure the border from 2006 to 2008, and former President Barack Obama deployed troops in a similar capacity in 2010, the Congressional Research Service said.
