Outgoing National Guard chief, US Army General Daniel Hokanson, has warned congress—and, by extension, the public—that deploying troops to the Mexican border is an exercise devoid of training value that, in his opinion, damages military readiness.
Hokanson, has served as the Chief of the National Guard Bureau since August as 2020, warned a Senate Appropriations subcommittee convinced with the defense budget that sustaining a troop presence on the southern border has some unexpected perils. The U.S. Northern command currently stations 2,500 Guardsmen along the border with Mexico.
He has, he told the subcommittee, not been quiet about his opinion on this matter. There is, as far as he can see, no military training value in the activities required of Guardsmen along the southern border. The role they’re serving is a law enforcement role and would be better left to employees of the Department of Homeland Security.
The Trump and Biden administrations have both deployed National Guard troops to the southern border to assist the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service in their job of securing the border. Hokanson’s remarks come on the heels of actions taken by President Biden to restrict the flow of migrants across the southern border.
Biden’s executive action on the border security question has garnered intense criticism from both sides of the congressional aisle. Montana Democrat Jon Tester, who chairs the Appropriations Defense Budget subcommittee, said during his questioning time that the situation at the border has decayed as a direct result of the Biden administration’s policy moves.
Hokanson said that his primary concern is that the National Guard troops deployed to the border regions are not undergoing training that they can apply toward their primary duties. For all the good it does them, he said, they might as well be serving in Kuwait. They’d receive just as little training, and they’d be just as inaccessible to their families, and their moral would decay just as much as happens when they’re standing the lonely posts along the Rio Grande.