Earlier this year, the Texas National Guard was called out to obsensibly protect the US border from immigrants coming in from Mexico.
In reality, they were deployed to guard wealthy private ranch owners.
In practice, service members said, they stood around for hours, staring at each other and the highway, outside the private ranches — some of which had their own private security.“We really don’t understand why we are there,” a service member told the Tribune. “We’re essentially mall security for ranches that already have paid security details to protect them.”
The dispatching of troops to wealthy private ranches raises more questions about the use of National Guard troops, who have widely decried the mission as aimless, political and oversized, as the cost of the effort has already ballooned to $2 billion a year. State leaders transferred nearly half a billion dollars to the Texas Military Department last month from three other state agencies to cover the mounting costs of keeping thousands of Texas National Guard troops on the southern border.
The dispatching of troops to wealthy private ranches raises more questions about the use of National Guard troops, who have widely decried the mission as aimless, political and oversized, as the cost of the effort has already ballooned to $2 billion a year.
That’s peanuts.
Texas is losing about $10 billion/yr by not doing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion and since 2013 19 rural hospitals have closed for lack of funding.
Biden officials fear “mass migration event” if COVID policies end www.axios.com/biden-border-mexico-migrants-title-42-a91b6441…
U.S. intelligence officials are privately bracing for a massive influx of more than 170,000 migrants at the Mexico border if COVID-era policies that allow instant expulsions during the public health emergency are ended, sources with direct knowledge of the discussions tell Axios.
The response under way includes a newly created — and previously unreported — Southwest Border Coordination Center (SBCC), essentially a war room to coordinate an interagency response…
On Wednesday, DHS Deputy Secretary John Tien asked employees “to consider stepping forward to support the DHS Volunteer Force,” citing large numbers of migrants at the southwest border, according to an email seen by Axios. The email seeks general support for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and help with data entry.
