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California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), the only border state governor who had not yet committed troops to President Trump’s National Guard deployment, said Wednesday that he will accept federal funding for 400 personnel — though they would be barred from working on wall construction.
National Guard troops fall under the command of state governors, and in a letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Brown said those from California will support operations against drug traffickers, gun runners and smuggling gangs.
“Combating these criminal threats are priorities for all Americans — Republicans and Democrats,” Brown wrote.
“But let’s be crystal clear on the scope of this mission,” his letter continued. “This will not be a mission to build a new wall. It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life. And the California National Guard will not be enforcing federal immigration laws.”
California’s “sanctuary” policies limiting cooperation with U.S. immigration agents have been a target for President Trump’s ire, and in his most recent weekly address he called the state “a border-free zone where thousands of criminal aliens can roam free.”
Members of the California National Guard work next to the U.S.-Mexico border fence in 2006 near the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego. (Denis Poroy/AP)
Trump last week ordered a military mobilization along the border with Mexico, accusing Democrats of encouraging illegal immigration and failing to protect the country from a flood of undocumented migrants. The president said he wants as many as 4,000 troops deployed, saying they will remain there until a border wall is complete.
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has provided an estimate of how much the military mobilization will cost.
[Troops sent by Trump will fly drones, gather intel — and clear brush too]
The governors of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona — all Republicans — applauded Trump’s move and quickly began dispatching troops to the border region. Several hundred have arrived so far, and Texas plans to have 1,000 in place within a few weeks.
Brown was the holdout, and his letter pushed back at administration officials’ claims that the United States faces a crisis at the border.
“Here are the facts: there is no massive wave of migrants pouring into California,” Brown wrote. “Overall immigrant apprehensions on the border last year were as low as they’ve been in nearly 50 years (and 85 percent of the apprehensions occurred outside of California).”
Brown was referring to annual arrests by U.S. agents at the southwest border, which dropped to their lowest level last year since 1971.
Trump has taken credit for that decline, but in March the number of arrests and denials of entry at the Mexico border jumped to more than 50,000, the single-highest one-month total since the president took office.
[Homeland Security says surge in illegal border crossings is a ‘crisis,’ warrants military deployment]
The increase was driven by an 800 percent increase in unaccompanied minors and a 680 percent surge in families crossing illegally, Nielsen told lawmakers Wednesday.
“Glad to have all four border governors working with us and the @USNationalGuard to secure the border,” Nielsen wrote on Twitter after Brown’s announcement. “Partnership w governors is vital to our nation’s success.”
Those groups of migrants typically turn themselves in to U.S. border agents to request asylum protections, citing threats from criminal gangs. The vast majority are from the hyperviolent Northern Triangle of Central America: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Those are the groups of migrants, Brown told Mattis and Nielsen, that he does not want Guard troops in California taking into custody.
The Pentagon has said National Guard troops will not perform a law-enforcement role and will be armed only for the purpose of self-defense. As they have in the past, military personnel will fly transport aircraft and surveillance drones, monitor security footage, and clear vegetation, officials have said.
The White House has also asked the military to identify bases and other facilities that could be used to detain migrants. In 2014, the Obama administration set up temporary shelters for children and families at three military bases when they could no longer cope with a rush of asylum seekers.
State government officials in California said Brown’s proposed agreement on the troop deployment had been submitted to the federal government for approval.
Paul Sonne contributed to this report.
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“If confirmed, it will be an immediate personal priority to work with those partners to see if such a fix is achievable,” he said. Negotiators from Europe have been working with their United States counterparts on such an agreement since Tuesday at the State Department, their fourth such conclave.
Mr. Pompeo also promised a tougher policy toward Russia.
“Russia continues to act aggressively, enabled by years of soft policy toward that aggression,” he wrote. “That’s now over.”
At the State Department, Mr. Pompeo’s nomination has, like the blossoming cherry trees along the nearby National Mall, been greeted as a harbinger of new life. Gone is the deep gloom engendered by Mr. Tillerson’s contemptuous treatment of veteran diplomats, staff cuts, leaderless drift and unsuccessful reorganization project.
Having already moved away or accepted lucrative jobs, many of the foreign service officers declined Mr. Pompeo’s recent offer to return. But they appreciated the outreach nonetheless, according to a former senior diplomat who had talked to others similarly contacted, but who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were intended to be private.
Mr. Pompeo’s call to Mrs. Clinton was particularly surprising, considering his fulminations against her as “morally reprehensible” when he was a member of the House Intelligence Committee after the Benghazi attacks in 2012.
“He’s reached back to every former living secretary of state, again no matter what party, to help receive whatever thoughts, guidance, insights that they would offer up,” said Brian Bulatao, the No. 3 official at the C.I.A. and who has known Mr. Pompeo since their first day as cadets at West Point. “But that’s the kind of style he has. No one’s going to out prepare, out-hustle or outwork Mike.”
Given Mr. Rand’s opposition, Mr. Pompeo may not receive the Senate committee’s blessing, which would be an embarrassing snub. Republicans could still pass his nomination to the full Senate, where 14 Democrats and an independent voted for his nomination as C.I.A. director.
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But none of those votes are assured this time.
He has been meeting with moderates in hopes of persuading at least a few Democrats and independents to back him. Liberal groups are mobilizing to oppose him.
“Mike Pompeo is absolutely the wrong choice for secretary of state,” Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, wrote on Twitter. Even Democratic staff members say Mr. Pompeo is likely to be confirmed.
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Mr. Pompeo’s hard-line foreign policy pronouncements as a conservative four-term Republican congressman from Kansas have caused some unease among the left-leaning, altruistic set at the State Department. In the past, he denounced the Iran nuclear deal, suggested that he supports leadership change in North Korea and supported enhanced interrogation techniques.
But his close connection with Mr. Trump and record of encouraging career employees at the C.I.A. have led many to hope that Mr. Pompeo may once again make their diplomatic efforts relevant.
For many, the change could not come at a more important time as pressing problems pile up — including a looming American military strike on Syria, increasingly toxic relations with Russia and a possible trade war with China.
In many ways, Mr. Pompeo is already the administration’s most important diplomat, having played the primary role in facilitating Mr. Trump’s risky diplomatic overture to North Korea through a channel that runs between the C.I.A. and its counterpart in Pyongyang, the Reconnaissance General Bureau.
Those who have long known Mr. Pompeo say he is perfectly suited for this moment. He graduated first in his class from the United States Military Academy and became a tank commander in Germany. He left the military after just five years, as a captain, to attend Harvard Law School.
Mary Ann Glendon, a law professor at Harvard who hired Mr. Pompeo as a research assistant, said that she “spent a lot of time talking to him about his future plans” — specifically, making his fortune and then going into politics.
“And he did it,” she said.
Not quite. After working for four years as a lawyer in Washington, Mr. Pompeo moved to Wichita, Kan., where he and three friends from West Point enlisted investors to buy four aircraft supply companies. They hoped to transform the industry and make themselves wealthy in the process. But the merged company, Thayer Aerospace, never succeeded.
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“The timing could have been better,” said Jim Gero, the chairman of Thayer’s board. “When I look at my various investments, it wasn’t the best.”
After 10 years, Mr. Pompeo and his partners sold Thayer, and he turned to marketing Chinese-made oil field equipment. Whether he appropriately disclosed that venture at his Senate confirmation hearing last year for the C.I.A. post may become an issue at Thursday’s hearing.
In 2010, Mr. Pompeo joined a crowded field of Republicans vying to win a House seat from Wichita. With substantial donations from Koch Industries, the sprawling industrial conglomerate that is based there and controlled by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, who donate heavily to conservative causes, Mr. Pompeo defeated his opponents in the Tea Party wave that year.
Mr. Pompeo’s financial disclosure reports reveal few assets. He was determined to rescue Thayer Aerospace from the worst of its difficulties, said Mr. Bulatao, who was one of his partners. But his shortfalls as a businessman could endear him to diplomats who believed that Mr. Tillerson’s success as the chairman of Exxon Mobil made him inflexible and arrogant at the State Department.
Mr. Tillerson isolated himself in his executive suite, rarely answered emails or phone calls even from the nation’s highest officials, and gave his cellphone number to almost no one. When the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, tried to reach Mr. Tillerson on his final trip as secretary, Mr. Kelly had to call one of Mr. Tillerson’s aides.
In his opening statement, Mr. Pompeo promised to be different.
“I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty,” he wrote. “I don’t ever stay sequestered on the executive floor of any building.”
Correction: April 11, 2018
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated Mike Pompeo’s role on the House Intelligence Committee after the Benghazi attacks in 2012. He was a member of the committee, not its chairman.
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