AUSTIN, Texas — Arizona and Texas have became the first states to mobilize National Guard members to help patrol the US-Mexico border in response to President Trump’s call for the Guard to help fight drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said about 150 Guard members would deploy this week.
The Texas National Guard said it would have place 250 members at the border by Monday as an ‘‘initial surge,’’ according to a Guard spokesman. Two helicopters lifted off Friday night from Austin, the state capital, to head south.
While other states have agreed to participate in principle, the total number of National Guard members deployed so far remains well short of the 2,000 to 4,000 that Trump told reporters he wants to send.
New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez’s office said Friday that although the state plans to comply with the request, it had not yet deployed any Guard members. The office of California Governor Jerry Brown has not said whether it would deploy any.
Trump’s proclamation Wednesday directing the use of National Guard members refers to Title 32, a federal law under which Guard members remain under the command and control of their state’s governor. This leaves open the possibility that Brown could turn him down.
Defense Secretary James Mattis on Friday night approved paying for up to 4,000 National Guard personnel from the Pentagon budget through the end of September.
A Defense Department memo says the National Guard personnel will not perform law enforcement functions or ‘‘interact with migrants or other persons detained’’ without Mattis’s approval. It said ‘‘arming will be limited to circumstances that might require self-defense,’’ but it did not further define that.
Deployments to the border under then-presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both occurred under Title 32. Bush sent around 6,000 troops in 2006, and Obama sent 1,200 Guard members in 2010.
In a separate development, Trump signed a memorandum to take steps to end immigrant ‘‘catch-and-release’’ policies as he pushes Congress to act on an overhaul of immigration law.
The policies generally allow the release of unauthorized immigrants while they await immigration hearings instead of keeping them in custody.
The Trump administration is targeting ‘‘catch-and-release’’ after setbacks on immigration in Congress, including the failure of the president’s plan to grant a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 1.8 million people in exchange for $25 billion for border security and sharp cuts to legal immigration.
In Tennessee last week, a federal immigration raid took 97 people into custody at a meat processing plant, which civil rights activists said may be the biggest employment crackdown yet by the Trump administration,.
Eleven people were arrested on criminal charges and 86 were detained for being in the country illegally, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said.
The Thursday raid on Southeastern Provision, a meat processing plant in Bean Station in eastern Tennessee, is the largest single worksite immigration enforcement action since the administration of President George W. Bush, said Jessie Hahn, a lawyer at the National Immigration Law Center.
Trump’s proclamation on the National Guard blamed ‘‘the lawlessness that continues at our southern border.’’ Trump has suggested that he wants to use the military on the border until progress is made on his proposed border wall.
After plunging at the start of Trump’s presidency, the numbers of migrants apprehended at the southwest border have started to rise in line with historical trends. The Border Patrol said it caught around 50,000 people in March, more than three times the number in March 2017.
That’s erased a decline for which Trump repeatedly took credit.
Border apprehensions still remain well below the numbers when Bush and Obama deployed the Guard to the border.
News reports of a caravan of Central American migrants passing through southern Mexico also sparked angry tweets from the president.
The caravan of largely Central American migrants never intended to reach the US border, according to organizer Irineo Mujica. But Trump has repeatedly cited it as an example of what he called America’s weak immigration laws.
Department of Homeland Security officials have said Guard members could support Border Patrol agents and other law enforcement agencies.
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said last week that Guard members could ‘‘help look at the technology, the surveillance,’’ and that the department might ask for fleet mechanics. Federal law restricts the military from carrying out law enforcement duties.
From 2006 to 2008, the Guard fixed vehicles, maintained roads, repaired fences, and performed ground surveillance. Its second mission in 2010 and 2011 involved more aerial surveillance and intelligence work.
Leaders in both Arizona and Texas said they were working with federal planners to define the Guard members’ mission.
