Chad Wolf, who served as acting Homeland Security secretary in the Trump administration, said the move by President Biden team to deploy troops ahead of a new border surge is “smoke and mirrors” and can’t be successful without a change in the president’s policies.
“I think this is all for public relations reasons,” Mr. Wolf told The Washington Times. “They want to show and demonstrate to the American people and others that they’re doing something. I don’t think deploying the National Guard, or at least announcing it 10 days before Title 42 ends, will be doing much.”
He said: “If you’re not going to change policy, and they’ve made it clear they’re not going to change policy, then the guardsmen are part of smoke and mirrors.”
Mr. Wolf was reacting to the announcement that the Pentagon will send 1,500 more troops to the border at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The Biden team said the troops, which come on top of 2,500 who have been deployed since the Trump years, will be on duty for 90 days.
“DoD personnel will be performing non-law enforcement duties such as ground based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support. DoD personnel have never, and will not, perform law enforcement activities or interact with migrants or other individuals in DHS custody,” the department said in a statement. “This support will free up DHS law enforcement personnel to perform their critical law enforcement missions.”
Mr. Biden joins Presidents George W. Bush, Obama and Trump in sending troops to deal with border problems.
SEE ALSO: DHS orders employees to drop regular duties, shift to coming border surge
But Mr. Wolf said Mr. Biden’s deployment won’t achieve as much as prior ones because the current administration’s attitude toward the border is backward.
The Trump team deployed troops to free agents to patrol the border and to interdict and return illegal immigrants, he said. For the Biden administration, agents are processing and releasing migrants, so freeing more agents to go into the field largely means a faster catch-and-release.
“All of these things are just further going to incentivize the crisis,” Mr. Wolf said. “The guardsmen, while it sounds good, does nothing to solve the problem.”
Mr. Wolf oversaw the department as it achieved the best border numbers in modern history. In late 2019 and into 2020, the number of illegal border crossers plummeted and those who did make the attempt were, by and large, expelled or detained.
Things turned south as the Biden administration took office and erased the get-tough Trump policies. The result has been record numbers of illegal border crossers, record levels of fentanyl smuggling detected, record numbers of terrorism suspects spotted sneaking across the southwestern border and record profits for the smuggling cartels.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.