By LYNN BREZOSKY
Associated Press Writer
HARLINGEN, Texas- Scanning television monitors for suspicious activity along the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday brought National Guard Sgt. Jose Balli, 41, back to his tours in Bosnia and Iraq.
“It’s just like monitoring when we were in Iraq. Or in tours of Bosnia, kind of similar to monitoring our perimeter,” he said, taking in the various images of farmland and clusters of trees swaying gently along the banks of the Rio Grande. The images were being captured live from U.S. Border Patrol security cameras posted on private land along the river marking the Texas-Mexico border.
Balli is one of three National Guard members assigned to 10-hour shifts in the camera room of the Harlingen Border Patrol station, a job he expects to be doing for the next year.
He is one of the 6,000 National Guard troops President George W. Bush is sending to assist the Border Patrol as it hires and trains enough new agents to double its ranks.
Dozens of National Guard members were deployed to Arizona earlier in the month.
In Texas, 73 Guard troops have so far been deployed, with as many as 1,500 expected to arrive by late summer.
The first group will be manning camera monitors and radios at Border Patrol stations in the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo sectors. By the end of July, a second and larger group is expected to be out acting as “eyes and ears” in the field. None will be making arrests.
The three Guard members watching cameras in Harlingen free three Border Patrol agents for the front-line duties of apprehending illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, said Senior Patrol Agent Alejandro Mendez.
“That will increase our manpower in the field,” Mendez said. “It’s a great help.”