Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced plans, today, to activate and deploy up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border to increase the presence of border security.
Here is the entire presser, but the audio is pretty messed up. In case you can’t get through it, shorter but cleaner videos follow.
The National Guard should stay plenty busy dealing with problems like this:
The Border Patrol found itself under fire on Friday night from what they think were.50-caliber weapons, not exactly light arms. The fire appears to have been an attempt to suppress border security actions while smugglers brought their human cargo to the north side of the Rio Grande, according to Fox (via Katie Pavlich):
U.S. Border Patrol agents on the American side of the Rio Grande were forced to take cover Friday night when high-caliber weaponry was fired at them from the Mexican side of the river, sources told FoxNews.com.
The weapons were fired at the U.S. side of the riverbank in the area of the Rincon Peninsula across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, Mexico, at about 8:30 p.m., sources said. Bullets ricocheted into an area where Border Patrol agents were positioned, Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told FoxNews.com.
Border Patrol sources confirmed Gohmert’s account, and said the shots may have been fired by .50-caliber weapons.
“We don’t have any armor that can stop a .50-caliber round, so our Border Patrol agents had to take cover when the rounds were richocheting around them,” said Gohmert, who has been in the area for the last week to get a first-hand look at the border situation.
“When the shooting stopped, about 40 to 50 people came out on the U.S. side and turned themselves in. So clearly the rounds were being fired to suppress every effort to stop anybody intervening with anyone or anything coming across,” Gohmert added. “We have no idea what or how many or whom came across with the other illegal immigrants.”
Sources said they believe the gunfire came from members of Mexican drug cartels, which include former military members trained in shooting that type of weaponry.
That would be a problem that the National Guard could address, certainly, if this incident has been verified — if the federal government won’t react to it.
I can’t help but wonder if any of these high caliber weapons will be traced back to any of the ATF’s gun-walking operations…
Nice Deb 