By Eliot Shapleigh

I am a fifth-generation resident of El Paso, Texas. For 14 years, I proudly served as a Texas state senator from El Paso, a community of patriotic, resilient and hardworking Texans perched right on the U.S., Texas and New Mexico borders.

In 1999, Rick Perry served one term as our lieutenant governor. With George W. Bush's election as president in 2000, Perry suddenly became governor.

Having served with Perry for 12 of my 14 years in public service, I know him well. I know his record, his beliefs and what he has done or failed to do on the Texas border.

On border issues, Perry's sole motivation is to pander to extremists in the Republican Party. In 2008, when Juarez, Mexico, just one mile from my home in El Paso, passed Baghdad to become the most violent city in the world, I spent countless hours in Washington, D.C., Mexico City and Juarez visiting with federal, state and community leaders crafting solutions to combat violence, help our sister city and build jobs.

Perry was absent from U.S. Department of State discussions, absent from real policy positions, absent from concrete solutions that might create real job options in a region of Mexico where "sicario," or paid assassins, then ranked at the top end of the pay scale. If ever the border needed Perry's help, that was the time.

Before that, in 2001, we passed a Texas-Mexico commission to help plan, implement and create a solid infrastructure, trade and economic development with our largest trading partner to increase prosperity in what is America's poorest region — the 32 counties of the Texas-Mexico border.

Perry failed to implement or fund commission activities.

In 2003, we passed innovative radio-frequency identification technology, or RFID, so frequent border-crossers engaged in business and trade might utilize fingerprint identifiers to move across the border, a program based on a successful prototype in Washington state and British Columbia. Perry failed to fund the RFID program and, thus, passed on a concrete opportunity to make the border safer, build jobs and move the $56 billion in legitimate trade that moves through the El Paso/Juarez/Southern New Mexico port.

Throughout the last decade, with great law enforcement, fusion centers and regional cooperation between local police, the state Department of Public Safety and federal officers, El Paso has been the safest or second-safest city in the United States (usually, Honolulu is first). In 2008, when 3,000 people were murdered in Juarez, making our regional public relations issues acute all around the world, Perry told U.S. media that "car bombs" had just gone off in downtown El Paso. That statement that had no truth whatsoever, and it significantly hurt tourism, trade and job growth for months.

For a guy who has made a career doing nothing on the border, ordering 1,000 National Guard troops here during the runup to the Iowa caucuses is just plain pandering, not a serious policy that will make any positive difference. The Texas National Guard is trained for war, not for detaining 4-year-old immigrants.

Texas National Guard troops have no authority to arrest nor detain nor even ask questions. They will just get in the way of well-trained U.S. Border Patrol agents, who do have arrest authority and whose increased numbers and technology have limited border crossings to the lowest in decades.

Back in 1997, during a similar deployment of military to the border, a U.S. Marine shot and killed Ezequiel Hernandez, a U.S. citizen who was herding goats near Redford, Texas.

Let's make a deal: We'll send you Rick Perry every weekend to campaign. You send us blankets, food and medicine so we can take care of refugee children who need due process on what will happen to them if they return to war zones.

THE AUTHOR:

ELIOT SHAPLEIGH, an El Paso lawyer, served in the Texas Senate from 1997-2011. Contact: eliotshapleigh@gmail.com.