NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Gov. Jeff Landry’s stated desire to deploy Louisiana National Guard troops to Texas to assist with border security brings with it questions of cost.
Landry, along with a dozen other Republican state governors, visited the Texas-Mexico border on Saturday (Feb. 3), appearing with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for a summit and press conference centered on illegal immigration.
Texas has been preventing federal border patrol agents from using an area in Eagle Pass to process migrants crossing into the state.
“We’re going to be coming back and asking our legislative leadership to find the money necessary to send our National Guard troops here to support Texas,” Landry said.
During a Monday appearance on the Fox News channel’s Fox & Friends, Landry was asked more about his plans.
Gov. Landry says he wants to send Louisiana National Guard troops to southern border of Texas
“Texas has always been a great big brother to the state of Louisiana,” he said. “They’ve always helped us in our time of need. And now, it’s time for Louisiana to reciprocate. To send National Guard troops down there to help Gov. Abbott and the Texas National Guard to seal the border.”
Retired Army Lt. General Russel Honoré told Fox 8 that Landry has the authority to order such a deployment.
“The governor has command of the Louisiana National Guard,” Honoré said. “It comes to a question that he has proposed to discuss with the legislature, because that deployment would have to come out of the budget of the state of Louisiana.
Honoré, whose two sons are in the Louisiana National Guard, says members of the service have previously assisted at the border.
“Our National Guard has been to the border before and served honorably there,” he said. “But they were under something we called Title 32, which is reimbursed under the federal government. This would be a state-to-state event.”
Honoré said if Louisiana sends Guard members to Texas, their personal incomes could be affected.
“Many of them work, so they’ll be losing,” Honoré said. “They’d be away from their jobs. Many of them will take pay cuts, because the federal government pays them for housing and what we call ‘separation pay.’ The states don’t pay that.”
Honoré said Abbott would set the rules of engagement for Louisiana guardsmen tasked to his state.
“Once they go into Texas, they go into a mission that is determined by the governor of Texas. The rules of engagement, as far as what are they to do at the border, that would come out in something they call ‘standard operating procedures,’” Honoré said.
Dillard University political analyst Dr. Robert Collins said National Guard members tend to be deployed for extreme weather or disaster events.
“There are rare occasions when national guardsmen have been deployed from one state to a different state,” Collins said. “But in just about every situation where we can see in the past, it has been specifically to respond to a natural disaster or a mass casualty event — a hurricane, a tornado.”
The National Guard was deployed for Hurricane Katrina in 2005. And Honoré was in charge after the storm and subsequent levee failures and flood swamped New Orleans.
“When Hurricane Katrina hit, our National Guard was in Baghdad (Iraq), and we brought them back home a little earlier to take care the people of Louisiana, because that’s their No. 1 mission,” Honoré said.
Collins said he thinks Landry will face pushback from some state lawmakers.
“I can’t imagine that’s going to be a popular request, at a time when we’re expecting next fiscal year to have a deficit, and so the state legislature is going to have to deal with that,” Collins said.
On Capitol Hill, the U.S. Senate is working to pass a bipartisan bill to deal with border immigration. But leaders of the Republican-led House of Representatives say the legislation will be “dead on arrival” in the lower chamber.
Honoré is conscious of the political dynamics surrounding border protection.
“The underpinning of all this is the political argument at the national level on securing the border, and all that’s got to be sorted out,” he said.
See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Click Here to report it. Please include the headline.
Subscribe to the Fox 8 YouTube channel.
Copyright 2024 WVUE. All rights reserved.
