USA — Guard Presence on Border Deters Threats

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 17, 2010 — The pres­ence of Nation­al Guard troops along the South­west bor­der has pro­vid­ed U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion agents with an addi­tion­al resource to counter drug smug­gling, human traf­fick­ing and oth­er threats along the bor­der, senior Guard offi­cials said this week.

Army Maj. Gen. Peter Ayl­ward, spe­cial assis­tant to the chief of the Nation­al Guard Bureau, cen­ter, speaks with Ari­zona Army Nation­al Guard sol­diers near Nogales, Ariz., while vis­it­ing troops serv­ing along the South­west bor­der in sup­port of U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol agents, Sept. 13, 2010. U.S. Army pho­to by Sgt. 1st Class Jon Soucy Click to enlarge

“With every place we’ve vis­it­ed, our col­leagues at Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol could­n’t praise them enough with step­ping up and real­ly pro­vid­ing an incred­i­ble capa­bil­i­ty that gives them the oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty they need, said Army Maj. Gen. Peter Ayl­ward, spe­cial assis­tant to the chief of the Nation­al Guard Bureau. 

Addi­tion­al flex­i­bil­i­ty also gives bor­der patrol agents a greater abil­i­ty to focus on spe­cif­ic areas with­in their sectors. 

“It helps us alle­vi­ate high-traf­fic areas,” said Mario Escalante, a Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol super­vi­so­ry agent. “More than any­thing else, they will be work­ing as addi­tion­al eyes and ears. They will be work­ing in … [entry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sites] giv­ing not just sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness of what is going on, but also act­ing as a [deter­rent].”

The deter­rence fac­tor read­i­ly can be seen in the num­ber of arrests made by Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol agents. In the Tuc­son sec­tor, dai­ly arrests have been on a steady decline, said U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol offi­cials, who attrib­uted the drop in num­bers to the Guard troops on duty in the area. 

The decrease has been steady for the past few years, offi­cials said, adding that Oper­a­tion Jump Start, ini­ti­at­ed in 2006, pro­vid­ed a much-need­ed boost. 

Because of that, the mis­sion along the bor­der isn’t quite what some troops imag­ined it would be like. 

“When I vol­un­teered for this mis­sion, I expect­ed it to be actu­al­ly mass amounts of peo­ple always cross­ing over,” said Army Spc. Joseph Syed of the Ari­zona Nation­al Guard. “I real­ly did­n’t know what to expect to see, but in my mind I expect­ed to see peo­ple just hop­ping [over the bor­der] and running.” 

Still, Syed said, ille­gal activ­i­ty along the bor­der still remains con­stant, with smug­glers search­ing for new ways to cross peo­ple and illic­it sub­stances across the border. 

“We most­ly see folks dur­ing the day,” he said. “We haven’t seen too many peo­ple at night. It start­ed out with one or two scouts a day, and now we have more along the ridge. Now they are actu­al­ly bring­ing groups with them.” 

Ayl­ward said those smug­gling oper­a­tions often fund larg­er enter­pris­es, such asnar­coter­ror­ism and transna­tion­al threats.. 

Many have com­pared the cur­rent rota­tion of Guard troops along the bor­der to Oper­a­tion Jump Start. The geo­graph­i­cal areas may be the same, but that is where the sim­i­lar­i­ty ends. 

“This is real­ly total­ly dif­fer­ent than Oper­a­tion Jump Start,” Ayl­ward said. “It is anoth­er phase, anoth­er chap­ter to make sure we’re doing every­thing we can to main­tain the sov­er­eign­ty of our borders.” 

One of the biggest dif­fer­ences is the ramp-up of troops. On aver­age, Guards­men will go through four weeks of addi­tion­al train­ing pri­or to work­ing on the bor­der. They began to arrive along the bor­der in late August and ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, and, as of yes­ter­day, slight­ly more than 1,200 Guards­men were in train­ing or already deployed to the border. 

The addi­tion­al time allowed the states to ensure that things ran smooth­ly, said Air Force Brig. Gen. Jose Sali­nas, com­man­der of the Ari­zona joint task force, Oper­a­tion Cop­per Cactus. 

“With the ramp-up, it’s giv­en us the time to train peo­ple, make sure our orders are in place, make sure we get our chain of com­mand up to speed,” he said. “[The troops] feel like they’ve been prop­er­ly pre­pared for the sit­u­a­tions they might see.” 

The train­ing was based on sce­nar­ios that ranged from bor­der crossers just need­ing water to encoun­ter­ing more aggres­sive, hos­tile groups. 

“They are also get­ting train­ing in a lot of the tech­nol­o­gy that we have,” Sali­nas said. “I feel very con­fi­dent our troops are get­ting what they need to per­form the mis­sion properly.” 

In all of these mis­sions, Guard troops are strict­ly in sup­port of the Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol or Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment officials. 

“We see some­thing, and we call it in to Bor­der Patrol,” Syed said. “They’ll go check it out.” This helps Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol to bet­ter focus on spe­cif­ic secu­ri­ty issues, he added. 

“The aug­men­ta­tion that we’re pro­vid­ing gives them the oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty so they can pool their resources and cov­er down on those vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties that have pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ed,” said Ayl­ward, who added that the Guard is part of less­en­ing those vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, while the Cus­toms and Bor­der Patrol recruits and trains addi­tion­al agents. 

Ayl­ward, who’d toured all four bor­der states this week, said he has been impressed with what he has seen. 

“The moti­va­tion, the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and the atti­tude across the board has been superb,” he said. “It real­ly makes you feel proud to be a part of the team, and it real­ly has been a great expe­ri­ence to come out and vis­it with the lead­ers and the sol­diers that are per­form­ing this mission.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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