Replies

“I really doubt we will have horse mounted patrols along the border today.”

The Border Patrol still uses horses in areas where other means of transportation is unusable.

“No matter how many troops we have along the border, we will still have legal border crossings”

No sh*t Sherlock.

The point of putting the military on the border is to eliminate the ILLEGAL border crossings. Legal crossings require valid documentation in order to enter the country.

“We should not force our soldiers, 1st Cav included, to answer to the Border Patrol”

The military wasn’t going to be answering to the Border Patrol.

The only interaction between the two would be coordinating patrol sectors, notification of illegal crossings, and hand off of those detained for processing.

Some troops MAY ride shotgun with the Border Patrol in areas known for violence due to the drug cartels to provide extra firepower.

Other than that, thats it.

“Our soldiers are trained to fight wars, not to search trucks or airplanes as they enter the country.”

Soldiers who are trained for war already search cars and trucks entering military installations but thats besides the fact that the troops wouldn’t be at the official crossing points conducting searches.

“the only purpose of stationing troops along the border is to force border crossers into controllable points of entry, where Customs officials can deal with them. That is the reasoning behind building a border fence,”

The fence can be bypassed either by cutting through it, climbing over it, tunneling under it, or in the case of the more mountainous area walk around it.

I believe the fence and troops should be used together to force people into legal crossing areas. Troops should not be used for law enforcement though. Leave the inspection of trucks or airplanes to customs.

Im not really arguing against the idea of troops along the border, just the idea that troops should become Immigration officials. In essence, these bills turned soldiers into customs officials.