Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Tuesday that additional Georgia National Guard members will be deployed to Texas to help with the ongoing unlawful migration crisis at the southern border.
At a press conference, Kemp said the crisis was “not a partisan issue,” noting that “reinforcements” will be sent to the Lone Star State in the spring, reported The Hill.
“To be clear, the crisis on the border is a national problem, and it demands a national solution. But if the Biden administration continues to fail the American people, then we have no choice, no choice but to step in,” he said.
These reinforcements will include the deployment of anywhere between 15 and 20 members of the Georgia National Guard who will join the 29 members already stationed in Texas, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Kemp clarified that the deployed Georgia National Guard members would help set up command posts and would not be granted every power given to Texas law enforcement officers.
“Our national guard is not going to be going and arresting people. We don’t have those powers,” Kemp said, per SMN. “We’ll leave that up to the Texas authorities.”
In addition to deploying troops to the border, the Georgia Senate voted 31-15 on Monday to pass a resolution condemning the border policies of President Joe Biden and supporting decisions by Kemp to “allocate resources and assistance to the protection of the southern border,” per Fox 5 Atlanta.
While the Georgia Senate voted to back Kemp’s decision, other officials in the state have been more critical.
Georgia Rep. Sam Park, a Democrat, accused Republicans of “following Trump and politicizing the issue for political gain” shortly after the governor’s announcement, reported WSB-TV.
“If Kemp and the GOP really wanted to solve the border problem, they would work with Biden and Democrats to pass bipartisan legislation to send billions of dollars to help protect our own border,” claimed Park.
Legislation meant to address the crisis failed to get passed by the U.S. Senate, in part due to the number of unlawful migrant encounters required to trigger a shutdown of the border.
Despite claims from Biden that the bill would have been the “toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades,” more than 1.8 million migrants would have been essentially allowed to enter the United States unlawfully each year, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
