As Illegal Crossings Decline President Obama Extends National Guard Stay On Southwest Border

In case anyone has forgotten, last summer the President deployed 12,000 National Guard troops to the southwest border to aid Border Patrol agents in making the border region safer. Last week the President announced that he was extending their stay.

Brian Bennet of the Los Angeles Times has the full story here, the troops which were intended to come off the border in July, have been extended thru September.

They are intended to help CBP stop illegal crossings and cash flow leaving the country back to the drug cartels in Mexico. The National Guard are meant to act as intelligence gathering entities, and help identify smuggling routes so that CBP can act on their intel and combat the cartels as they try to enter the country.

The Guard are part of a massive $600 million emergency supplemental spending increase passed by a Democratically controlled congress last year. One thing is certain, these tactics and resources are working, with the number of immigrants crossing into the United States declining:

The politically popular surge of manpower and funds comes as the number of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. is declining. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, about 300,000 illegal immigrants crossed the border annually between 2007 and 2009, down from about 850,000 annually from 2000 to 2005.

The emergency funds allocated for the border have not all been spent with the Department of Homeland Security purchasing:

• New mobile camera towers,
• Fencing
• Increasing the number of surveillance drone flights along the border.
• Two additional Predator B drones,

For more on President Obama's Border safety plan please read NDN's report, The Governments Plan on The Border is Working.