to be made here the second thing is the rhetoric associated with this. all the published statements i ve read talk about hardening certain points on the border and then go on to talk about well, they re going to provide support functions for the border patrol and the i.c.e. folks. youtant have both and when you talk about hardening points on the border, you are talking about enforcing federal immigration laws. that again brings about comitasse. there was a report in 2012 discussing and evaluating for congress a number of your excursions with the act of the military on the guard in the border. there is a prediction for that. the provision is only under enforcement of the drug laws, but not for the enforcement of other laws. gio brought up many of the concerns that myself in that report that myself and my colleagues have. so what other options do you think the president had? he is obviously concerned about
three permanent members of the u.n. security council, it was important for all of us to stand together and say, this is a barbarity that even in warfare we cannot tolerate. jon: let s talk about the pentagon s budget. you have rolled out a plan that would cut $25 billion not from front-line troops but so-called pentagon support services. what are you proposing what are you hoping to achieve there? well, one of the ways that folks put it is we need to reduce the tail and put more emphasis on the tooth of the military. what that means is, over the past number of years the bureaucracy, the back-office support functions of the pentagon have grown tremendously. if you compare the money that goes to the army, navy, air force and marines, we re significantly less than we were, say, during the cold war era. so i m trying to take to make
be if and when deployed? they will be doing operational support functions for us. watching monitors, border cameras, sensor feeds, those kinds of things. helping us in the back room activities. we ve used them previously to help repair roads and vehicles. we ve used them to do intelligence and analysis and aviation is a big part of what we hope they bring. sandra: is there any idea of the costs involved here? it s probably expensive. all military endeavors come with a cost but we add a lot of value to the border security mission. we ll improve conditions our agents work in the border community condition and border security that s one in the same. sandra: is there any sort of estimate you re working off of there as far as the costs concerned and what it would take away from the military? i m not sure about that. that would be something we would have to discuss with the pentagon. sandra: we talk about the surge in attempted crossings tripling in march from a year ago.
of mexico. what can the national guard troops, what can they not do, and will they be armed? there are a lot of questions here and few answers. the pentagon said they would engage most likely in things like aviation, maintenance, surveillance, logistics support, support functions for the border control operations down there. but not likely to engage in law enforcement actually moving out and detaining people trying to cross the border themselves. these will be national guard activated by the governors. the big question, of course will they be armed? will the governors want them to be armed? will the pentagon want them to be armed? the dhs secretary, department of homeland security, talked about telleri talked about it earlier, very noncommittal. mexican officials will be unarmed, is that true? we, as you know, in the past they have had in 2006 there were weapons. it has been done before.
working out how many will be deployed. we don t know how many, for how long or how much it will cost. we don t know whether they will be armed and what they will do. she says the national guard will help free up border patrol agents. we would be looking for them to do that. they help provide medical care for those that we do interdict. they help us do maintenance. a lot of mechanics to use in that terrain. so it s a lot of support functions that will free up the border patrol to do what they do best, which is enforce border laws. support functions. the idea is they have not talked to the governors of the states to see what the governors want. mexico is pushing back against the president s decision. lawmakers there passed a resolution today that could possibly end cooperation between the united states and mexico on things including border security and drug trafficking. under federal law, the president of the united states can deploy troops anywhere in the united states. former presi