The National Guard was mostly useless under Bush's national deployment.  It slowed things at first because immigrants were fearful of crossing when they heard the border had soldiers on it.  After a few months they realized that the National Guard had been neutered.  National Guardsmen were deployed to man surveillance equipment... And then the Border Patrol Agent who would have normally manned it, had to protect and stand guard over the National Guardsman because he wasn't armed.  National Guardsmen began to get complacent and slept after a short time when they realized that they weren't really helping much.  

 

The problem then wasn't that the illegals were going undetected.  It was that there weren't enough Border Patrol Agents to arrest all of them.  Daily Bonsai Runs of 200 illegals in an area where 2 or 3 Border Patrol Agents patrolled.  Yeah, the agents saw them, but there was nothing they could do besides arrest the people who fell off the fence and got hurt... and grandma going by in her walker. 

 

Hopefully a Texas state deployment will go better.

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