Rick Perry Says Deploying Troops to Border Sends a ‘Powerful Message’

Josh Siegel
The Daily Signal
7/29/2014

…Perry, in an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal, said even though the 1,000 military troops he activated to help manage the border crisis in his state will not be authorized to make arrests, the sheer presence of the military will deter illegal activity.

“It’s a powerful reminder that what you are doing is a crime,” said Perry, who has been a critic of the White House’s response to the border crisis. “It’s just like a law enforcement effort in your neighborhood, where you see a parked patrol police car on the corner, and the bad guys see it and don’t commit a crime.”

By announcing plans to deploy the National Guard to the border on his own rather than through the federal government, Perry has the power to order the troops to make arrests and apprehensions.

But Perry, perhaps responding to critics who worry about the troops’ lack of training in immigration law, told The Daily Signal he has decided not to give arrest power to those deployed to Texas’ border with Mexico.

“Their real job is not apprehension,” Perry said. “Border Patrol apprehends.”…

 

 

The complete interview is at The Daily Signal.

 

 

Related:    US border crisis: ‘There were 150 women and children, lined up there, just waiting to be picked up’

…“I started to count and there must have been 150 of them, all children, teens and young women, no men, and the remarkable thing was that they were just lining up and waiting to be picked up,” said Mr Goff, a college student. “I’ve had people come up to me in my pickup truck and just say ‘border patrol, border patrol’,” said Mr Goff. “One time, four teenage males jumped into the back and wouldn’t get out until I drove them to find the nearest patrol.

“They just got out and put their hands behind their backs to be cuffed.

Border patrol has been turned into a militarised taxi service for these people.” The influx is in an unintended consequence of anti-trafficking law passed under George W Bush in 2008, Under that statute, children arriving from countries that do not share a border with the US have to go through immigration proceedings and be given the chance to make their case to stay.

President Barack Obama hosted a White House summit late on Friday with his three Central American counterparts, urging them to spread the word that most children would be deported as they did not qualify for humanitarian relief or refugee status, despite the poverty and crime they were fleeing…

 

 

Read the whole thing.

 

 

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