John Myers reports for the L.A. Times:
Gov. Jerry Brown agreed on Wednesday to expand the California National Guard's efforts on crime and drug issues that cross the state's border with Mexico, but insisted troops would not be used to enforce immigration directives from President Trump.Here is the text of the letter:
"This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life," Brown wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis. "And the California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws."
April 11, 2018
Dear Secretary Nielsen and Secretary Mattis:
Pursuant to your request, the California National Guard will accept federal funding to add approximately 400 Guard members statewide to supplement the staffing of its ongoing program to combat transnational crime. This program is currently staffed by 250 personnel statewide, including 55 at the California border.
Your funding for new staffing will allow the Guard to do what it does best: support operations targeting transnational criminal gangs, human traffickers and illegal firearm and drug smugglers along the border, the coast and throughout the state. Combating these criminal threats are priorities for all Americans - Republicans and Democrats. That's why the state and the Guard have long supported this important work and agreed to similar targeted assistance in 2006 under President Bush and in 2010 under President Obama.
But let's be crystal clear on the scope of this mission. This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life. And the California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws.
Here are the facts: there is no massive wave of migrants pouring into California. Overall immigrant apprehensions on the border last year were as low as they've been in nearly 50 years (and 85 percent of the apprehensions occurred outside of California).
I agree with the Catholic Bishops who have said that local, state and federal officials should "work collaboratively and prudently in the implementation of this deployment, ensuring that the presence of the National Guard is measured and not disruptive to community life."
I look forward to working with you on this important effort.
Sincerely,
[sig: Jerry Brown]
Edmund G. Brown Jr.
Can "support[ing] operations targeting transnational criminal gangs, human traffickers and illegal firearm and drug smugglers along the border..." really avoid helping catch persons illegally crossing the border "escaping violence and seeking a better life"? I very much doubt that the Gov. can deliver on making that separation. Even so, I welcome California's entry into the effort. Immigration issues aside, we do need to secure the border for the reasons Gov. Brown notes, and if California incidentally helps enforce federal immigration law in the process, so be it.
"Even so, I welcome California's entry into the effort."
My immediate reaction was similar.
I served briefly in the FL Army Nat. Guard, which not only fought forest fires, but whose members also deployed overseas to fight in Desert Storm, and surely
the global war on terror, Iraqi Freedom, Afghan freedom, etc.
Stopping border crossing, until better barriers are established, is exactly what
they can and should do.
"But let's be crystal clear on the scope of this mission. This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children ..."
~ Such is meaningless grandstanding and "virtue signaling". Is he thinking of the rounding-up of women and children by National Socialists in Germany, or Communists in Cambodia?
I agree with the Catholic Bishops ... that the presence of the National Guard
[should not be] disruptive to community life."
~ What on earth does that mean?