WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday infused his proposal for using the National Guard to combat illegal immigration with all the drama of an Oval Office address, but the military and civilian officials who will carry out the plan have deep misgivings about a real show of military force on the border.
As a result, the president's big initiative is heavy on symbolism but will be small in scale -- and largely invisible on the ground. Though about 6,000 guardsmen at a time will be assigned to the southern U.S. border in two-week stints, they will be limited to supporting roles behind the scenes.
That reflects Pentagon officials' reluctance to use the Guard in a direct law enforcement role, because catching illegal immigrants is not a task soldiers routinely train for. And officials in border states worry that armed soldiers will exacerbate tensions and step on local law enforcement efforts.
"I don't want to see soldiers on the border," said Jerry Agan, the county judge in Presidio County, Texas. That is where Marine Corps reservists -- in an incident that still casts a shadow over the region -- mistakenly killed a Mexican American shepherd in 1997. "We've been down that road before, and it did not work out," Agan said.
Those sentiments were echoed by military leaders Monday. "Picture guys running around with M-16s. If I was a citizen in that part of the country, I am not sure I would want that in my backyard," said one Army officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss policy.
Even in its limited form, however, the plan may run into problems on another front:
The two-week deployments for each Guard unit will take the place of the units' normal two-week summer training periods. The arrangement should alleviate stress on Guard soldiers who already have done yearlong tours in Iraq, Afghanistan or Kosovo. But by giving up the units' only block of sustained training time, it will complicate the task of preparing Guard troops for their primary roles -- responding to natural and other disasters and conducting combat and peacekeeping missions overseas.
Against that backdrop, military and civilian officials agreed that what the Guard should provide is support for existing border enforcement efforts. That means truck drivers, intelligence analysts and helicopter pilots, not mechanized infantry and gun-wielding soldiers.
