to California, Arizona, New Mexico, and
Texas. Though opponents criticized this
move as a political stunt, there is ample
precedent for deploying the National
Guard to augment the US Border Patrol —
George W. Bush and Barack Obama both
activated guardsmen to work this mission
during their presidencies. ‘Guardian
Support’ is entirely voluntary, with state
and territorial governors deciding whether
to send troops to the border, and all those
being sent having volunteered to do so.
Numerous legal constraints limit what
they can do during domestic missions,
especially while on federal active-dutyorders. Chief among these restrictions is
that guardsmen cannot directly engage
in law enforcement — they cannot arrest
undocumented aliens (UDAs), nor engage
in the use of force on US soil.
What guardsmen activated under
OGS can do is ful ll administrative tasks
typically performed by border patrol
agents, allowing them in turn to be out
in the eld. More agents in the eld
means more opportunities for CBP to
interdict narcotics shipments, provide
medical care to those who need it, and
apprehend so-called ‘bad hombres’ —
those undocumented aliens with previousconvictions for violent or drug-related
crime, or obvious indicators of criminal
intent or association.
The majority of the border patrol’s
mobility resides in a large eet of heavy-
duty pick-up trucks capable of reaching
remote areas along America’s southern
border. These are augmented by all-
terrain vehicles, horses and helicopters
from CBP’s Air and Marine Operations
(AMO) component. Helicopters are by
far the fastest and most capable means
of reaching remote areas of the border,
but the AMO only has a handful of these.
The OGS aviation component puts Army
National Guard (ARNG) helicopters and
crews at the sole disposal of the border
patrol, allowing ground agents —
organized into mobile response teams
(MRTs) — to be deployed to more areas,
more quickly.ARNG helicopters
on the border
The national guard has three types
assigned to OGS: Sikorsky UH-60L and
UH-60M Black Hawks and Eurocopter
UH-72A Lakotas from the ARNG, and
Fairchild RC-26B Condors from the Air
National Guard, which joined the OGS
stable in October 2018. The RC-26Bs have
a long history of co-operation with federal
law enforcement agencies and have been
active as part of state counter-narcotics
task forces across the country. As medium-
endurance surveillance aircraft, the
RC-26Bs are being used to augment CBP’s
eet of sensor-equipped C-12 King Airs in
the surveillance role along the border.
The ARNG helicopters assigned to OGS
mirror the capabilities of the border
patrol’s two primary helicopters, the UH-60
and the AS350 A-Star. It uses the UH-60s
for interdiction, insertion and extraction of
agents in remote areas, and transportationLeft: A Lakota
pilot fl ying an OGS
patrol over the
Arizona desert.
CBP
Below: A border
patrol agent
with one of the
Tucson Sector’s
Mobile Response
Teams waits near
his assigned
aircraft prior
to a ‘Guardian
Support’ mission
in February 2019.
Joe Copalmanhttp://www.combataircraft.net // August 2019 59
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