Replies

You have to read the article between the lines and know about Texas's Operation Border Star, which was a plan that was set up several years ago by Perry as a contingency plan if cartel violence overflowed the border into Texas. Back in those days there was a big war going on between the cartels but has since subsided.

Most of Operation Border Star was/is being paid for with Justice Dept grants but Texas spends about a million a year on it.

It involves local border law enforcement(County Sheriff/Muny PD), Texas Rangers, state police(DPS), and up to 1000 guardsmen if the situation warrants.

Since Border Star was set up there has never been an cartel incursion incident that required intervention but they hold training exercises on certain intervals.

If you read between the lines of the article and notice where they might deploy these guardsmen you get a sense that Perry might be calling up these 1000 guardsmen as part of an Operation Border Star training exercise.

But for the optics of the situation, it helps Perry to frame the call-up in a different way.

snip
“This is not a militarization of the border,” the memo states. “The DPS and the
National Guard are working to keep any drug and human trafficking south of
(U.S. Highway) 83 and with the goal of keeping any smuggling from entering
major highways to transport East/West/and North.”

DPS officials want to send National Guard troops into western areas of the
Valley and the ranch lands further north, according to the memo.

“Smuggling has supposedly according to DPS moved West on the border with an
increase in Jim Hogg County,” the memo states. “DPS especially wants to
apply the Guard in the rural areas to patrol.”

end snip

http://www.themonitor.com/news/local/gov-rick-perry-to-deploy-national-guard-troops-to-rgv/article_a016fb52-1073-11e4-975b-0017a43b2370.html