For the second time, the Pentagon denied a request on Monday 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.
Bowser first asked for National Guard help last month, but it was rejected by the Pentagon on Aug. 4. She then sent another letter on Aug. 11, 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.”
Defense Department executive secretary Kelly Bulliner Holly wrote in a letter to Bowser on Monday 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 reviewed by Fox News.
“Approval of this request would also result in a substantial readiness impact to the DCNG,” Holly continued. “Devoting the personnel or the facility for such an extended mission would force the cancellation or disruption of military training.”
About 7,000 migrants have been bussed from Texas to Washington, D.C. since April and another 900 have arrived in New York City, according to Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.
“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,” Abbott said Friday. “Now, the rest of America can understand exactly what is going on.”
Bowser called the bussing of migrants on Monday a “politically motivated stunt.”
“We struggle with a broken immigration system in our country, and we know that cities alone cannot fix it,” Bowser tweeted. “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.”
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
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