For years, Mayor Elizabeth G. Flores has been asking Washington for more help not only in controlling illegal immigration, but also drug trafficking here at the nation's second-busiest border crossing. More Border Patrol. Better technology. More federal resources.But militarize the border with National Guardsmen? That is where she draws the line
"We have over 300 Border Patrol officers from here serving in Iraq. Why doesn't
bring them home to do the job they were trained to do?" said Flores, as she walked inside City Hall, which overlooks Texas and U.S. flags out front and the Mexican flag about a quarter-mile away at the border. This seat of government sits at the cusp of "los dos Laredos," the two Laredos, as locals say -- Laredo and Nuevo Laredo -- through which 4.4 million pedestrians, 6.3 million vehicles and 1.4 million trucks pass yearly.
"The National Guard is trained to protect us from deadly people," said Flores, a Democrat who has been in office 8 1/2 years. "People crossing over here to work are not our deadly enemy. . . . I think this is all about discrimination and nothing else." To assuage such concerns over a militarized border, Bush in his nationally televised address Monday stressed that the National Guard troops would play a strictly supporting role, saying, "the Border Patrol will remain in the lead."
But the front-line fears of some local officials reflect only a few of the broader questions about how the new National Guard role will work. Apart from whether the Guard is the right force to use, Guard officials themselves wonder how their forces, stretched by war-zone deployments and homeland defense, will tackle a new mission, what skills it will demand and -- perhaps most critical -- for how long.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051501739.html
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