WASHINGTON – U.S. Congresswoman Candice Miller (MI-10), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Border & Maritime Security, and Congressman Peter T. King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and eight other Committee Republicans today requested that President Obama extend the current National Guard deployment beyond the June 30th stand down date as the Department of Homeland Security continues to recruit and train additional Customs and Border Protection Officers and Border Patrol Agents that were funded in the Fiscal Year 2010 Border Supplemental Bill.

In a letter to President Obama, Miller and King wrote that: “the National Guard is serving as a valuable force multiplier during the current Southwest border mission. We remain concerned that these 1,200 Guardsmen and women will stand down before a sufficient number of Border Patrol agents have been hired and trained to replace these soldiers. We believe that this would put at risk the valuable gains that have been made in many areas along the border at a time of increasing violence which threatens to spillover to our nation’s border communities.

“We respectfully request your assistance in extending the current National Guard deployment beyond the 30 June stand down date as the Department of Homeland Security continues to recruit and train additional Customs and Border Protection Officers and Border Patrol Agents. In addition, we believe it is neither fair nor equitable for the entire burden of providing personnel to fall to the four Southwest border states alone. Border security is a federal responsibility and the burden should be shared by other states, as necessary to sustain the mission.”

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Click here to view the letter to President Obama