Iowa governor taps COVID funds to send troops to Mexico border

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) is the latest GOP state leader to send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, deploying 109 Guardsmen to Texas Wednesday. 

The deployment, meant to assist Texas’s border security effort Operation Lone Star, will be paid for by the Biden administration’s COVID-19 relief package known as the American Rescue Plan Act, according to a statement from Reynolds’s office.  

The act, which President Biden signed into law in 2021, was uniformly opposed by Republicans. 

“All costs will be covered by federal funding allocated to Iowa from the American Rescue Plan,” the release states. “States are given flexibility in how this funding can be used provided it supports the provision of government services.” 

The deployment will last until Sept. 1 “with the mission of deterring illegal border crossings and preventing the trafficking of illegal substances by cartels through Texas,” the statement notes.

In addition, the Iowa Department of Public Safety will send a group of Iowa State Patrol officers to Texas Aug. 31 “to support Texas State Troopers with criminal interdiction, crime prevention, traffic enforcement, and law enforcement assistance,” with that deployment to end Oct. 2. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who has routinely blamed Biden for an influx of migrants into the state, says his state-led operation is necessary to secure the border. The initiative has cost taxpayers around $4.5 billion since 2021. 

Abbott has also tapped federal COVID funds for his border efforts, spurring an investigation by the Treasury Department.

Since March, at least 14 Republican governors have ordered a combined 1,400 National Guard troops to the border at Abbott’s request — including governors of Oklahoma, West Virginia and Nebraska who announced deployments earlier this week. 

But the deployments are not in concert with a separate, federal effort to handle migrants at the border. The disconnect prompted Blas Nuñez-Neto, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) assistant secretary for border and immigration policy, to accuse Abbott of taking “actions that are being done really for purely political reasons and that do not involve the kind of coordination that we really need to see at the border.”  

He also called on governors in May to “make sure that any steps they take are done in coordination with our federal personnel.”

Operation Lone Star has also been lambasted by Democrats and migrant advocates because some say it creates dangerous conditions for those wishing to enter the U.S.  

A federal investigation is now in the works after reports of Texas troopers’ mistreatment of migrants along the Texas portion of the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The latest state Guard deployment comes as the Biden administration is calling back some 1,100 active-duty troops deployed to the southern border earlier this year. 

The Pentagon in May approved the temporary deployment of up to 1,500 active-duty troops to the border for 90 days in anticipation of a possible increase in illegal border crossings that didn’t materialize.   

The 1,100 troops will finish their 90-day mission Aug. 8, with some already beginning to return to their home bases this week. The other 400 troops will remain at the border through Aug. 31.