The Guard’s strategy on the border will shift from
on-the-ground patrolling to providing more high-tech, mobile aerial
surveillance with military helicopters, a Pentagon spokesman said. Border
officials will determine in the coming weeks which areas of the border the
remaining troops will focus on.
{mosads}Reaction in Congress was split along party lines. House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), said troops should remain
until Border Patrol agents have control of a majority of the border.
“If the Obama administration’s goal is border security,
their actions undermine their objective,” Smith said. “The administration’s
decision to draw down the National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexico border
makes an already porous border worse.”
But Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) lauded the decision to
shrink the Guard’s border presence.
“While I appreciate the service of our National Guard forces,
requiring them to engage in border law enforcement activity is not cost
effective,” Reyes said.
The U.S.-Mexico border has been a frequent topic of the
Republican presidential debates, where the candidates have attacked both
President Obama and one another over the best way to secure the border.
Obama sent the 1,200 Guard troops to the Mexican border in May
2010 to provide surveillance and help stop drug trafficking. In September,
Obama extended
the stay of the Guard troops by 90 days, through the end of the year.
The number of Guard troops is dropping as the size of the
Border Patrol grows to a record level, the two departments said Tuesday.
They noted that Border Patrol arrests, an indication of the level of illegal
immigration, decreased in fiscal year 2011 to 340,000, a 53 percent drop since
2008.