National Guard pulls soldiers from border

EDINBURG — The Texas National Guard has reassigned hundreds of soldiers deployed along the state’s southern border and expects to remove several more before the end of the summer, military officials confirmed this week.

The shift is expected to free up more guardsmen for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and bolster the state’s preparedness for emergency management at home.

But it could also stymie the U.S. Border Patrol’s efforts to increase manpower along the Rio Grande and slow the flow of drugs and undocumented immigrants across the border.

The drawdown comes as part of a planned de-escalation of Operation Jump Start — a controversial security initiative that deployed 6,000 guardsmen to border regions in four states last year to tide over the Border Patrol until it could follow a Bush Administration plan to hire and train an equal number of new agents by 2008’s end.

“We are scaling back in the Valley sector,” said National Guard Lt. Col. Orlando Salinas, who has coordinated border security efforts for the Rio Grande Valley’s National Guard battalion. “As more and more new Border Patrol agents are coming in, our soldiers are heading out.”

Last May, President Bush urged governors in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico to send the troops for what he described as a “state of emergency” along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry deployed 1,700 soldiers in support of Operation Jump Start, many of whom arrived in the Valley sector.

By the end of next month, the agency expects to lose half of those National Guard soldiers, most of who have been primarily assigned to intelligence and administrative positions.

The guard plans to withdraw all troops from the border by early next summer.

So far, more than 150 guardsmen deployed to the Valley sector have been reassigned, Salinas said.

“Some of these soldiers have already been deployed to other missions, including Iraq,” he said.

During Operation Jump Starts’s first year, guardsmen across the U.S.-Mexico border helped fill out paperwork for sworn agents, took charge of vehicle maintenance and helped set up security infrastructure such as light posts, infrared sensors and cameras.

Guardsmen also played a crucial role in new border intelligence centers, which helped to map immigration patterns and track data from electronic sensors in the field, Border Patrol agents said.

The guardsmen did not have the authority to arrest or detain undocumented immigrants or suspected drug smugglers.

Still, soldiers were directly involved in identifying more than 70,000 undocumented immigrants, seizing nearly 20,000 pounds of drugs and discovering almost $60,000 since June 2006, said Xavier Rios, a Washington-D.C.-based spokesman for the Border Patrol.

As the 3,000 soldiers begin to leave Jump Start, the Border Patrol has filled hundreds of new positions.

From October to March, the agency has graduated 1,300 recruits from its Artesia, N.M., training facility, Rios said.

The Border Patrol hopes to maintain several of the administrative jobs soldiers helped fill, but recruits for these positions will not count toward the agency’s overall hiring goal by 2008, Rios said.

“(The guardsmen) have helped free up a number of our sworn agents from administrative and intelligence tasks,” Rios said. “And that has helped us tremendously in accelerating our border security efforts.”

Lt. Col. Salinas estimates that of the Texas National Guard troops stationed between Laredo and Brownsville, nearly 40 percent were soldiers who grew up in the Valley — a factor that played into the mission’s overall success.

“Our Valley soldiers have lived here their whole lives, so who better than them to understand the area’s border security problems,” he said.

Many of them have enjoyed the work so much that they have decided to seek permanent employment with the agency.

More than 10 guardsmen assigned to Salinas’ Valley battalion have completed training to become full-time Border Patrol agents.

“I think it’s been a perfect marriage,” he said.

“We have a significant historic relationship with the Border Patrol, and it will continue to withstand the tests of time.”