Gov. Rick Perry to Send Texas National Guard Troops to Secure U.S.-Mexico Border

Governor Rick Perry is expected to announce at a press conference in Austin this afternoon that he will be mobilizing Texas National Guard troops to the border. A memo obtained by The Monitor states that troops are expected to enter the Rio Grande Valley area gradually, building up to 1,000 after a month.

According to the memo:

This is not a militarization of the border. 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.

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

In June, officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety were sent to the border to focus on human smuggling and drug trafficking.

Governor Perry has made it clear that he would take matters into his own hands if Obama did not act. At a Republican bar-b-que in Iowa over the weekend, Gov. Perry said, “If the federal government does not do its constitutional duty to secure the Southern border of the United States, the state of Texas will do it."