April 6, 2018
Trump deploying token border force to fool core supporters
When President Trump said he was deploying the military to our southern border, I thought, "Finally!" Congress has blocked Trump's attempts to build a border wall and hire more border guards, but President Trump has found a unilateral action he can take to finally secure the border!
If only.
It turns out that President Trump is talking about deploying only between 2,000 and 4,000 National Guardsmen to the border. That's a tiny token force. How do we know this?
Consider that there are about 18,000 Border Patrol agents at our southern border. In light of that, an increase of only about 3,000 is tiny.
Furthermore, it's been tried before.
Past presidents, including George W. Bush and even Barack Obama, have sent guardsmen to the border. In "Operation Jump Start," President Bush sent 6,000 troops to the border – twice as many as our great presidente is proposing right now!
But even Bush's 6,000 troops were unable to secure the border:
The Administration calls their deployment a success, citing a 24% reduction in illegal entrant arrests during the course of the mission. But what does that 24% reduction really say? Of course no one knows for sure, but up to a million illegal aliens are estimated to infiltrate the U.S. each year across the southern border. So with 6,000 Guardsmen in place, only 760,000 illegal aliens successfully infiltrated the United States.Let's review. We deployed the National Guard to secure the southern border against illegal entry. As many as three-quarters of a million unidentified foreign nationals – five times our military deployment in Iraq – got through anyway.That's not a success. That's a colossal failure, unless you count photo ops of the National Guard on the border as the real mission.
So Bush's 6,000 troops couldn't secure the border; but Trump expects to the same with half that number.
Why doesn't Trump draw on the necessary numbers to secure the border? The troops are there to be drawn on; the president is not limited to calling up troops from border states to guard the southern border. And President Trump certainly has the power to call up 36,000 national guardsmen.
But for some reason, President Trump is calling up a fraction of the number President Bush called up.
The only explanation I can think of is that Trump is not serious about securing the border and is taking this action to shore up his political standing with his core supporters.
President Trump is embarrassed that conservative supporters like Anne Coulter have called him out for signing a spending bill that, although funding abortion, Obamacare, and other Democratic priorities, offered him only 33 miles of new fencing, no border wall money, and virtually no money for additional border guards.
This gesture is meant to placate President Trump's supporters, who will see the headlines showing that President Trump is sending the military to the border but won't be curious enough to find out exactly how many soldiers he is sending.
For me, this is the final proof I need to be convinced that President Trump is not serious about dealing with illegal immigration or securing our southern border.
o The president agreed to end DACA but called on Congress to reinstate it legislatively.
o The president called for amnesty for at least 1.8 million illegal aliens, putting him to the left of Barack Obama.
o The Obama-era holdover running ICE is arresting illegals at a somewhat faster pace but also conducting "show raids" where businesses are warned in advance and arrests are few to none.
o The president signed legislation outlawing his border wall and providing money for only 33 miles of fencing for a 2,000-mile border.
And by the way, these guardsmen Trump is calling up? They will be totally unarmed and unable to detain a single illegal without the help of the border patrol. If drug-smugglers fire at them, they will be helpless to defend themselves. Good thinking, President Trump!
Actions have consequences. So do elections. Republicans will be demoralized from turning out for the 2018 elections because Congress hasn't moved to secure our borders and the president hasn't fought for it (remember the veto, anyone?). President Trump is positioning himself to be a one-term president by his failure to act in any significant way to secure the border or deal with illegal immigration.
Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.\
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