“Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border,” President Donald Trump tweeted on Tuesday. | George Frey/Getty Images Trump accuses California's governor of not protecting border

President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that “the high crime rate will only get higher” along California’s border with Mexico after the state’s Democratic governor reportedly turned down administration plans to deploy additional National Guard troops there.

Gov. Jerry Brown said Tuesday that offer to deploy new troops remains in place, but wouldn't commit to using the soldiers to implement the White House's immigration policies.


“Looks like Jerry Brown and California are not looking for safety and security along their very porous Border. He cannot come to terms for the National Guard to patrol and protect the Border,” the president wrote on Twitter. “The high crime rate will only get higher. Much wanted Wall in San Diego already started!”

Brown, the only Democratic governor of a state bordering Mexico, had originally agreed to Trump’s request to deploy the National Guard along the border, a step the president has said is necessary until his long-promised border wall is completed. But Brown’s willingness to deploy the California guard came with a condition that they not be used, even in a supporting role, for immigration enforcement, according to The Associated Press.

Although the specific number of new soldiers is still at issue, the California governor's offer to deploy troops along his state's border with Mexico remains in place, Brown said Tuesday.

“I think we’ve already come to terms” on an agreement with the federal government, Brown said, speaking at a National Press Club event in Washington. "It could be two or four hundred. That’s being worked out. There’s very good communication between California’s National Guard and the National Guard headquarters.”

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Citing anonymous sources, the AP reported Monday that California had rejected the federal government’s plan because it featured duties that the state considered too closely tied to immigration enforcement, including vehicle maintenance, operating surveillance drones and reporting suspicious activity to border patrol, radio operation and clerical and administrative work. The AP noted that the California guard has carried out those types of duties in previous border deployments under past presidential administrations.

National Guard troops in Texas are already conducting air and ground surveillance, the AP reported, while troops in New Mexico and Arizona will offer air and ground support.

“We’ve got plenty to do with respect to our borders,” Brown said Tuesday, citing cartel violence, the proliferation of human trafficking and black-market gunrunners moving weapons from the U.S. into Mexico. “It is a very logical step to have a couple hundred more” troops at the state line, he added.

Trump’s tweet Tuesday morning attacking Brown and warning of California’s climbing crime rate appeared online minutes before the governor faced a throng of reporters at the press club.

“Trying to stop drug smuggling, human trafficking and guns going into Mexico from the cartels — that sounds to me like fighting crime,” he responded. “We want to be cooperative. I appreciated the president’s tweet when he thanked me. There’s been a little bit of a back-and-forth, as there is with bureaucrats.”

Brown’s unexpected acquiescence last week to the administration’s troop request earned him a rare show of amity from the commander in chief, who tweeted the next day: “California Governor Jerry Brown is doing the right thing and sending the National Guard to the Border. Thank you Jerry, good move for the safety of our Country!”

But that brief armistice between the two leaders devolved after Trump’s Tuesday tweet, with Brown criticizing the president’s stepping up of ICE raids and other hard-line immigration measures.

“America is getting ripped apart, and our communities are being ripped apart,” Brown said.

“This is not human, it’s not decent, and it’s completely unproductive,” he added. “I think it’s time to just chill. Recognize the fact that they’re here.”

In the final year of his fourth term in office, the 80-year-old Brown has shepherded California’s opposition to the White House’s agenda, positioning the Golden State as a West Coast counterpoint to the conservatism of Trump’s Washington. The longest-serving governor in American history has also relished embracing a new role as ideological foil to the 45th president.

“I’m trying to deal with a human crisis,” Brown said. “At the human — I might say Christian — level, we have to act in a way that’s not just securing political points. It’s point-scoring that exploits fears.”