Department of Homeland Security officials lambasted the president of a Border Patrol union for calling President Trump's border deployment of the National Guard a "colossal waste of resources."

As of Friday, National Guard troops assisted U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and Border Patrol agents in apprehending 4,116 illegal immigrants, turning back 1,182 people, and seizing 3,486 pounds of marijuana since April 15, according to new DHS data first obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Yet National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd, who originally supported Trump's April 4 executive order, said Friday he has "seen no benefit" to the project.

"When I found out the National Guard was going to be on the border I was extremely excited," Judd told the Los Angeles Times. "[But] that has not happened at all."

The NBPC includes 15,000 of the total 19,000 agents nationwide. It is plagued with staffing issues and is working to add 7,000 more agents to its ranks.

The deployment of the guard temporarily fills the holes in a way that could delay the requested additional hires, which could be perceived as an obstacle by a union chief whose focus automatically is growing that body.

Katie Waldman, a DHS spokesperson, said Judd is mistaken and added that the guard has had a significant effect on lifting the burden on federal agents stationed at the border.

“While the National Guard deployment has not yet reached full capacity, it has clearly and unquestionably been a success with thousands of additional apprehensions and millions of dollars of drugs kept out of our country," Waldman said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

Judd's primary grievance with the 1,600 deployed troops is that they are shadowing agents because they are not allowed to do some tasks, including immigration-related or law enforcement jobs.

"They're not allowed to be in the public eye. They're not allowed to be in our lookout and observation posts, even in Texas," Judd explained.

He stated said the current deployment is not letting troops be on the front lines in the same manner as previous deployments during the Bush and Obama administrations.

While California has limited troops to helping in only nonimmigration tasks, DHS insisted the number of apprehensions and drug busts speak to the project's early success.

While in previous operations, troops would have accompanied agents on border outings but not been able to legally arrest an illegal entrant or trafficker, this operation has had troops helping monitor the international boundary from afar.

Troops are providing support from the air, surveillance back-up, and assistance with infrastructure projects like vegetation clearing and road maintenance. Another task is to specifically free up agents to leave their desks and get back out to the field. The troops monitoring remote video surveillance systems have then been able to report sightings to a greater field of agents and thus, the number of apprehensions has increased, officials said.

"Those folks are giving us the additional situational awareness in the radio rooms ... which are allowing the Border Patrol agents sitting in those areas to go into the field," a National Guard official, who described the addition of the Guard as a "force-multiplier" for CBP, said during an April press conference.

According to CBP, this has resulted in a surge in the amount of criminal activity agents have stopped.

[Border apprehensions triple in April compared to a year ago]

Those numbers could tick up considerably if the 4,000 National Guard troops Trump initially approved on April 4 are called on in a future request from CBP.

DHS made three separate requests of troops to supplement CBP, Border Patrol, and most recently, for the Office of Field Operations, Air and Marine Operations, and the Office on Intelligence.

"The third request for assistance to deploy additional Guardsmen in support of the mission to secure the southern border was recently authorized and is being implemented," Waldman added.