Gov. Chris Sununu is asking the Legislative Fiscal Committee to spend $850,000 to send a 15-member unit of the New Hampshire National Guard to the southern border to assist efforts by Texas to enhance security. Here, Sununu, rear and fourth from the left, appears with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican governors during a recent briefing on security at Eagle Pass, Texas.
Gov. Chris Sununu is asking the Legislative Fiscal Committee to spend $850,000 to send a 15-member unit of the New Hampshire National Guard to the southern border to assist efforts by Texas to enhance security. Here, Sununu, rear and fourth from the left, appears with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican governors during a recent briefing on security at Eagle Pass, Texas.
CONCORD — Gov. Chris Sununu wants to send a 15-member New Hampshire National Guard unit to support Texas’s efforts to shore up security at the southern border.
Sununu made an $850,000 request to the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee to deploy the troops for the next 90 days under the direction of the Texas National Guard.
“The southern border has devolved into a corridor for the cartels to funnel fentanyl (and other drugs) into this country, fueling an epidemic of overdoses and ruined lives. Open borders invite threats of terrorism and other ill-intended aims,” Sununu wrote.
The letter comes 10 days after Sununu joined Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and 13 other GOP governors for a briefing on the controversy in Eagle Pass, Texas.
Sununu said that the southern border crisis amounts to a “civil emergency,” which under state law permits him to make this request.
“Simply stated, in the absence of a willingness at the federal level to secure our borders, states (both individually and collectively) must undertake efforts to protect the safety of their citizens,” Sununu said.
If approved, these state dollars would come from the state budget surplus.
The House-Senate fiscal panel will take up the request when it meets Friday morning.
Last year, Sununu convinced the Republican-led Legislature to include in the two-year state budget a $1.4 million effort to beef up enforcement at the state’s northern border with Canada.
The Northern Border Alliance Program provided grants to local, county and state law enforcement agencies to pay for overtime, training and equipment costs.
Democratic critics of the program said recent figures from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire confirmed that a tiny number of arrests and encounters with suspected illegal immigrants had occurred at the Granite State’s border with Canada.
“Rather than pushing for real solutions and backing the bipartisan border legislation that passed the U.S. Senate, Governor Sununu and Donald Trump want to play up the crisis at the southern border to sow fear and division in an election year,” said Rep. Mary Jane Wallner, D-Concord, who is a former chair of the fiscal panel.
“If Governor Sununu really wants to address the southern border, he should encourage Speaker Johnson and his Republican colleagues in the U.S. Congress to support the bipartisan bill that was just sent to them by the U.S. Senate. Americans want solutions — not political stunts.”
Sununu has pointed to a record number of detentions over the past year at the Swanton Sector, which included the Canadian border crossings in Vermont and upstate New York.
