Georgia National Guard to send members to U.S.-Mexico border, Gov. Brian Kemp announces

Between 15 and 20 members of the Georgia National Guard will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border this spring to assist border patrol agents in Texas, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced on Tuesday.

They will join the 29 members of the Georgia National Guard who are currently stationed in Texas to help set up a command post at the border.

Kemp’s announcement comes in response to what Republican lawmakers in both chambers of the Georgia legislature are calling a “national immigration crisis.” Kemp's announcement was delivered shortly after resolutions decrying federal immigration policies and pledging support for Texas Gov. Greg Abbot passed in the state House and Senate.

Georgia is more than 800 miles from the U.S. southern border. However, state lawmakers insist that immigration problems still hit close to home, conflating an influx in immigrants from Latin America with a rise in fentanyl trafficking across the U.S.

Immigration: Georgia Senate resolution urges reforms, funds for U.S.-Mexico border wall

“No one can claim there is not a crisis at our southern border,” Kemp said in his address. “Thanks to the failures of the White House, now every state in the country is a border state.”

Federal crime data indicates that the vast majority — nearly 90% — of those arrested on fentanyl trafficking charges are U.S. citizens. However, lawmakers say that closing the border is a necessary step to curb drug trafficking throughout the U.S., and have called for the reinstatement of two Trump-era border policies: Executive Order 13768 and Proclamation 9844.

Executive Order 13768, which was declared unconstitutional by a U.S. district court in the first year of former President Donald Trump’s presidency, would have cut federal funding for “sanctuary cities” that refused to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Proclamation 9844 declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, and allowed the former president to divert billions of dollars from military construction funds to build a border wall. Both orders were overturned by President Joe Biden.

Though the Georgia National Guard members will be traveling to Texas, Kemp said that they will mainly be assisting with engineering and mechanical issues at the command center.

“Our national guard is not going to be going and arresting people. We don’t have those powers,” Kemp said. “We’ll leave that up to the Texas authorities.”

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Gov. Brian Kemp to send Georgia National Guard members to border