The initial deployment of California National Guard troops has arrived at the international border here and will soon begin backing up federal law enforcement agents.

Standing in front of 51 troops during a brief Monday morning news conference, Gloria Chavez, the new Border Patrol chief in the El Centro sector, said that the Operation Guardian Support soldiers would be unarmed, serve solely in support roles and won’t be asked to arrest any suspected unauthorized immigrants, gun runners, drug mules or other criminal suspects.

“They’ll be assisting from behind the scenes so that our agents are able to get to the front lines and do the border security,” she said.

Chavez said that California National Guard headquarters in Sacramento is expected to send another 22 airmen and soldiers to her sector before the deployment wraps up in the end of September. The initial wave of troops is undergoing training that will reorient them to operations along the international border.


“They’ll be working cameras,” she said. “They’ll be working in offices. They’ll be conducting intelligence analysis. They’ll also be helping us with road infrastructure with regards to vegetation and road clearing and such but it’ll never be a frontline border security assignment or task.

“Their job is going to be behind the scenes, providing us that critical support that today Border Patrol agents do. Where I need my Border Patrol agents is on the frontline, doing the patrols, doing the interdictions of anything that crosses that border.”

Chavez’s sector stretches for 71 miles along the international boundary from the Jacumba Mountains in the west to the Imperial Sand Dunes in the east and includes the cities of El Centro, Calexico, Brawley Indio and Riverside.

In the budget year that ended on Sept. 30, El Centro agents apprehended 18,633 undocumented immigrants and interdicted 5,554 pounds of marijuana, 483 pounds of cocaine and 1,526 pounds of methamphetamines. They also reported 21 assaults against Border Patrol personnel.


From the toe of Texas to the Pacific Ocean, Border Patrol last year apprehended 303,916 migrants crossing unlawfully into the United States from Mexico, the smallest number since 1971, according to the agency’s official statistics.

Chavez said that her approximately 900 agents now are detaining on average about 80 unauthorized immigrants per day.

National Guard troops did not speak during the news conference but their roles appear to match those outlined by California Gov. Jerry Brown in written orders he drafted on April 18, following a back-and-forth with President Donald Trump over how uniformed personnel would be used along the border.

Brown has set a limit of 400 troops to be used to beef up border security, targeting criminal gangs, human traffickers and smugglers moving guns and drugs statewide, not just along the international line.


They largely will supplement ongoing Guard initiatives. Before the arrival of the troops in El Centro, the Guard already had 250 personnel assisting on transnational counter-narcotics efforts statewide, 55 of them along the border with Mexico.

The federal taxpayer will foot the bill for the influx of Guardsmen but Brown retains command over how they’re used.

Although California’s troops now join Guardsmen from Arizona, Texas and New Mexico along the border, Brown ordered his personnel to never help workers erect a controversial three-story border wall championed by Trump or assist in arrests of undocumented immigrants, saying that those are roles reserved for federal law enforcement agents.

Trump is the third president over the past dozen years to seek help from state governors to secure the border.


President George W. Bush’s Operation Jump Start stretched between 2006 and 2008 while Barack Obama’s Operation Phalanx kicked off in mid-2010 and wrapped up six years later.


Military Videos × On Now D-Day paratrooper from Coronado jumps again in France — at age 96 On Now Remembering war's fallen, one name at a time On Now In Ramona, an airplane and an aviator provide living lessons on World War II 1:43 On Now Video: Navy's newest vessel sails into San Diego and a new future in surface warfare On Now Video: U.S. Navy files homicide charges over warship collisions On Now Stopping Marine hazing On Now Video: U.S. Navy Air Crew Grounded After Creating Vulgar Sky Drawing On Now Navy says Asia Pacific ship collisions were avoidable On Now Hundreds of recruits get sick at Marine boot camp On Now Cutler Dawson Talks Navy Federal

cprine@sduniontribune.com