An interesting thing has happened since Donald Trump ordered 5,200 federal troops to the southern border last October in a ploy to influence the election. One of the border states elected and inaugurated a Democratic governor. While Trump has again ordered troops to the border in Texas (this time to highlight his need for a wall), over in New Mexico things are a bit different this time around.
The governor of New Mexico ordered the state’s National Guard to withdraw a majority of its troops from the southern border, slamming what she called President Donald Trump’s “charade” shortly before his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
“New Mexico will not take part in the president’s charade of border fear-mongering by misusing our diligent National Guard troops,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a statement…
…She also ordered troops from outside of the state, including Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wisconsin, to return to their home states.
Governor Grisham is still mindful that there are communities in her state that are seeing migration, which is why she is committing some resources to Hidalgo County.
But how many resources does she think are necessary? It turns out that she is committing approximately 12 guardsman and six state police officers. So, by her estimation, she can adequately deal with the “emergency” on her state’s southern border with 18 people.
Now, perhaps she’s wrong. Perhaps she needs more than 18 people to adequately protect her state from all manner of crime and drugs. But she knows that she’ll suffer politically if anything bad happens, so it’s a safe bet that she isn’t taking security lightly. If she wanted to be a little more on the safe side, she could triple the number and maybe have a few more than fifty people dedicated to the “crisis.”
What she won’t do is humor the president’s “charade.” Since she’s not a Republican, she doesn’t have any reason to humor him.
I’m way too lazy to look stuff up, but the fact is that none of the border states want any more WALL or other types of border fences than what they’ve already got. If you check out newspapers from CA, AZ, NM & TX, you’ll see it over & over again.
I read somewhere that Trump in the SOTU last night said something to the effect that El Paso was this lawless, crime-infested, terrible city, but hey presto! when WALL was built there, it suddenly became a safe place. Or some such nonsense.
Time and again, when you read/hear citizens who vent the most about the need for WALL and increased border security, they’re people who live in places like Ohio, North Dakota, Idaho and so forth. IOW, nowhere near the border, except possibly the one with Canada (which they don’t seem concerned about).
IOW, Trump riles up those racist voters in more northerly states who are far from the border. They shriek and wail about it.
Those living ON the border do NOT want more WALL for a whole range of sensible reasons. The main one being: WALL won’t improve security and it’ll cause a whole passle of problems and issues.
Whole thing is the biggest waste – what was it? Some billion$ of dollar$ wasted on the last govt shut down all in the name of Wall.
So frustrating.
You are correct. I have observed that those around here who clamor non-stop for the wall are often driven most angry by the fact that there are bilingual signs in the local banks, and in many of the grocery stores, and also the fact that every time they go to the ATM the first thing they see is the question for Spanish or English.
It seems really stupid and infantile, but those are the daily issues that make their heads explode. It animates them like nothing else.
I would not be against building a wall around those states. Preferably with a good-sized DMZ. They can feel secure then and leave the rest of us out of it.
Lujan Grisham’s political career isn’t threatened by this now. She was just elected by 14% over the former Congressman from CD-2 who gave up his seat to run for Governor, Steve Pearce. The winner of CD-2, a Democrat in a traditionally Republican CD, is Xochitl Torres Small who has to run again in two years. Her opponent in 2018 has already declared for 2020.
And boy is that opponent a piece of Trumpist work.
A part of the border with Mexico is very mountainous and not readily accessible to would-be immigrants. Not sure if New Mexico is that area but a Google image seems to indicate a very difficult area to traverse on foot so I’m guessing this is not a high priority immigrant area.
Besides the symbolism, the only reason for the Wall would seem to be pork barrel politics for selected contractors.
The border runs smack through the middle of the Rio Grande in certain areas. We’ve probably all been unfortunate enough to hear the racist slur “wetbacks” because, yes, some immigrants do swim across the river in certain areas.
But how do you build WALL through the middle of the river? And/or on which side do you build WALL? IOW, who gets to be the lucky country that has no acces to the river?
I’ve seen gormless conservatives whining about “why not just do it as it doesn’t ‘hurt’ anything??” Like: 1) we should toss $5.7billion at Trump allegedly just to shut him UP??, 2) damn stupid WALL would have a ton of negative impacts, environmental and otherwise, plus how the EFF do you build it down the middle of a river??
Trump’s rabid fans have not one iota of a clue what they’re shrieking about, but hey, golly, we should just treat them all with kid gloves. Otherwise, they’ll get their delicate snowflake fee fees all hurted ‘n stuff.
pfffft!