The Pentagon has delivered bad news to a Democrat mayor requesting help with their migrant crisis after they put in a second request for help, despite being pro-immigration and supporting migrants. A request by Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser to activate the National Guard to assist with thousands of migrants who have been arriving in the nation’s capital in recent months, was flatly denied for the second time by the Pentagon.
Last month, Bowser first asked for National Guard help but on August 4 it was rejected by the Pentagon. On August 11, She sent another letter requesting that 150 National Guard troops be deployed to “help prevent a prolonged humanitarian crisis in our nation’s capital resulting from the daily arrival of migrants.” Bowser then received a letter from Defense Department executive secretary Kelly Bulliner Holly who wrote that the DC National Guard is not trained to assist migrants and activation would lead to “diminished readiness” for the troops.
“The DCNG has no specific experience in or training for this kind of mission or unique skills for providing facility management, feeding, sanitation or ground support,” Holly wrote in the letter, which was then reviewed by Fox News. “Approval of this request would also result in a substantial readiness impact to the DCNG. Devoting the personnel or the facility for such an extended mission would force the cancellation or disruption of military training,” the letter said.
According to Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, since April this year, about 7,000 migrants have been bused from Texas to Washington, DC, and another 900 have arrived in New York City, said NY Post. Abbott said: “Before we began busing migrants to New York, it was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all the chaos and problems that come with it. Now, the rest of America can understand exactly what is going on.”
A “politically motivated stunt” is what Bowser called the busing of migrants. Bowser then took it to Twitter, where she wrote: “We struggle with a broken immigration system in our country, and we know that cities alone cannot fix it. We will continue working with federal partners and local NGOs on the best way to set up systems that allow us to manage an ongoing humanitarian crisis.”
Operation Lone Star was launched by Texas to deal with the influx of migrants across the southern border in March 2021. Abbott said that Texas law enforcement officials have apprehended nearly 300,000 migrants since then, and seized 326 million lethal doses of fentanyl. The work of several non-government organizations and civilian groups in assisting with the arrival of migrants was also cited by the Pentagon.