DHS Secretary Chertoff Scoffed at National Guard Patrolling Border in December 2005

May 15, 2006 – 8:21 p.m. DHS Does About-Face In Backing Use of National Guard to Seal Border By Patrick Yoest, CQ Staff

In December of 2005, Fox News talking head Bill O’Reilly floated an unlikely – even brash – idea to the Homeland Security secretary to seal off the porous southwest border. “Why don’t you put the National Guard on the border to back up the border patrol and stop the bleeding, and then start to increase the Border Patrol, the high-tech and all of that?” O’Reilly asked. Michael Chertoff, in those relatively calmer days before mass pro-immigration rallies, heated immigration reform politics in the Senate and cellar-dwelling opinion polls for President Bush, dismissed the idea out of hand. “Well, the National Guard is really, first of all, not trained for that mission,” Chertoff told O’Reilly. “I mean, the fact of the matter is the border is a special place. There are special challenges that are faced there.” Chertoff added that that it would take a huge amount of National Guard troops, that they would need new training. But couldn’t the National Guard pull it off, O’Reilly asked? “I think it would be a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage this problem,” Chertoff said. “Unless you would be prepared to leave those people in the National Guard day and night for month after month after month, you would eventually have to come to grips with the challenge in a more comprehensive way.” But it appears that O’Reilly’s battle cry, and that of much of the anti-immigration lobby that has influenced the immigration reform debate in Congress, has had an effect on the Bush administration. Despite plans for a substantial technology and equipment procurement – SBInet – and proposed increases in Border Patrol personnel, President Bush has announced plans to supplement Border Patrol agents with National Guard personnel as part of a $1.9 billion border security upgrade.

Click here for the full story.

KJ