The Pentagon rejected a second plea from Washington, D.C., for the deployment of the National Guard to help ease an influx of migrants into the city.
Department of Defense executive secretary Kelly Bulliner Holly told D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) on Monday that the National Guard is not trained to handle the situation, which has been fueled by migrants bused in from Texas and Arizona in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis, and that a deployment could hamper its readiness. Bowser first requested National Guard aid on July 19 and re-upped the request on Aug. 11 after the initial plea was rejected, contending the DoD did not have a strong grasp on the situation.
DC MAYOR SENDS NEW PLEA FOR HELP AFTER REQUEST FOR NATIONAL GUARD DENIED
“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 a letter to Bowser, per Fox News. “Devoting the personnel or the facility for such an extended mission would force the cancellation or disruption of military training.”
Bowser’s first request was rejected on Aug. 4, with Pentagon officials arguing it could hinder the National Guard’s readiness and pointing to grant funding the city received from FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program to help remedy the situation.
In her second request, Bowser underscored that she was merely seeking deployment for a 90-day period and argued that the National Guard could provide much-needed logistical support to help ease the city’s staffing woes amid the flood of migrants.
Since April, Texas has bused roughly 7,000 migrants to Washington, D.C., and about 900 to New York City, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said, per Fox News. Abbott has argued that the move will help ensure the “rest of America can understand” Texas’s plight amid a surge of migration at the border. Arizona, too, has been busing migrants to D.C. this year for the same reason. Many of the migrants stopped at the border have been released on humanitarian parole or with notices to appear in immigration court, per the Associated Press.
Bowser decried the move as a “politically motivated stunt, one that could very quickly lead to a crisis within our own systems” in a tweet Monday.
We know that these unannounced buses are a politically motivated stunt, one that could very quickly lead to a crisis within our own systems. We struggle with a broken immigration system in our country, and we know that cities alone cannot fix it.
— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) August 22, 2022
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Despite the Pentagon’s rejection, Bowser was adamant that the nation’s capital would collaborate with non-government organizations and other federal agencies to help address the migrant situation. She also highlighted her advocacy for D.C. statehood so that the next time the city is faced with a similar crisis, the mayor “has the ability to deploy the Guard.”
We are going to move forward with our planning to ensure that when people are coming through DC on their way to their final destination that we have a humane setting for them.
— Mayor Muriel Bowser (@MayorBowser) August 22, 2022
“We are going to move forward with our planning to ensure that when people are coming through DC on their way to their final destination that we have a humane setting for them,” she tweeted Monday. “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.”
