Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced Monday he was dispatching 14 state troopers to the southwestern border region in response to a request for assistance from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
In a statement, DeWine’s office said the members of the Ohio State Highway Patrol would be at the border for two weeks to “assist local law enforcement with border surveillance” and would not be deputized to make arrests.
On Friday, the Republican governor said he would send 185 members of the Ohio National Guard later this year in response to a request from the Department of Homeland Security and the National Guard Bureau. The guard members will join 115 members of the Ohio Guard’s 1484th Transportation Company who were previously deployed to the border. DeWine did not provide details of what the new Guard members’ mission would be.
About 3,000 Guard members from several states are currently involved in the mission to provide security along the US-Mexico border.
Last month, Abbott and Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey asked their fellow governors to send any law enforcement personnel and equipment that they could spare to the border region amid a surge in illegal immigration.
DeWine is the sixth Republican governor to respond affirmatively to the request, joining Ron DeSantis of Florida, Brad Little of Idaho, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has declined the request to send troopers, but has left open the possibility of sending National Guard personnel.
Noem raised eyebrows last week when she announced she would send 50 National Guard troops, making her the only governor to use military force to respond to Abbott and Ducey’s request.
“The border is a national security crisis that requires the kind of sustained response only the National Guard can provide,” Noem said in a statement knocking her fellow governors. “We should not be making our own communities less safe by sending our police or Highway Patrol to fix a long-term problem President Biden’s administration seems unable or unwilling to solve.”
Noem’s spokesman Ian Fury said the cost of the National Guard’s deployment, which will last between 30 and 60 days, would be paid by a donation from Willis and Reba Johnson’s Foundation. Willis Johnson, a Tennessee-based founder of an online used car auction called Copart, regularly makes large contributions to Republicans, including $200,000 to the Trump Victory Committee last year.
Abbott declared a disaster in 34 counties along or near the border June 1 in response to the illegal immigration crisis. Last month, Customs and Border Protection announced that it had recorded more than 180,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants in May, the most in a single month since April 2000.
With Post wires