By Karin Brulliard
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 17, 2006; A06
FORT PICKETT, Va. -- Staff Sgt. Michael Roush stood in the damp southern Virginia heat and pondered the Arizona desert where he was headed.
On one side of the tree-lined road behind him, a Virginia National Guard soldier playing the part of a detainee lay on his stomach as a colleague frisked him. On the other side, a camouflage-clad sergeant warned a group of soldiers that border-crossing migrants are driven by potentially dangerous desperation.
"It's a whole new ballgame for us," said Roush, 38, a veteran of war in Bosnia and the Hurricane Katrina cleanup on the Gulf Coast. "Normally when we go somewhere, you know who the enemy is. This one you don't."
When the call went out late last month for Virginia Guard volunteers to help the U.S. Border Patrol stem illegal immigration on the southwestern frontier, Roush and more than 300 others had signed up within days. Last week, the first 120-person contingent arrived at this base south of Richmond for basic training that included reading maps, treating wounds and using rifles as splints. They were to leave this weekend for a two-month stint.
For Guard soldiers and airmen accustomed to hurricanes and war zones, the border work is unusual -- part humanitarian, part homeland security and all swept up in a political firestorm over immigration. But the Virginia volunteers, some recently returned from Iraq, were firm that the operation is crucial to saving immigrants from death in the desert, keeping them out of the United States or some of both.
"Just people trying to make a better life," Roush said. "But you've got to limit it."
President Bush pledged in May to station National Guard troops along the southwestern U.S. border with Mexico as a stopgap measure until more Border Patrol agents are hired and trained, a plan cheered by border-control backers. Although Guard members, who will be armed, have been assigned such humdrum duties as building fences, manning surveillance towers and crunching payroll figures, criticism of the deployment has been fierce: Some critics decried the "militarization" of the border, and others denounced the deployment as a misuse of overtaxed Guard forces or a token offering of toughness that would be of little help.
The administration plan called for 2,500 Guard troops to be in place by July 1 and 6,000 by Aug. 1. By early this month, there were widespread reports that not even half were on the border. White House and Guard officials disputed that, however, saying the promise had technically been fulfilled -- more than 2,500 soldiers were inside the four border states by June 30, they said, but most were still training.
As of Thursday evening, more than 3,600 Guard troops had arrived in Arizona, California, Texas and New Mexico, National Guard spokeswoman Kristine Munn said. About 1,400 were deployed in direct support of the Border Patrol, she said; the rest were in training or at the Guard's four in-state headquarters.
The governors of 30 states, including Maryland and Virginia, had agreed by Thursday to send Guard volunteers, if asked, Munn said. Kevin Hall, a spokesman for Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), said Kaine agreed to send as many as 500 troops after state Guard officials assured him that the remaining force could respond quickly to hurricanes or other calamities. A Maryland National Guard spokesman said the border states had not requested Maryland soldiers.
The Border Patrol has touted the operation's success. Last week, the agency credited the National Guard with helping agents detain 518 illegal immigrants and seize more than 4,700 pounds of marijuana and 18.5 pounds of cocaine. Guard support has allowed nearly 170 agents -- fewer than 2 percent of the those posted along the Southwest border -- to abandon non-law enforcement duties and return to patrol work, agency officials said.
"They have been instrumental," Border Patrol spokesman Mario Martinez said.
But not everyone is so sure. T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said federal dollars would be better spent on technology and more agents. The deployment is a "political showpiece" with minimal potential impact, he said, noting that the Border Patrol said the Guard presence will free up at most about 500 agents for patrol duties and that some states are sending troops for just two weeks.
"There's only so much they can learn" in a short time, Bonner said.
For Virginia Guard members, the deployment is a good occasion to take part in a national mission, represent their state and get hot-weather training that could come in handy, Maj. Gen. General Robert B. Newman Jr., head of the state Guard, told reporters here. The Arizona desert, Newman said, "bears a whole lot of resemblance to Afghanistan and Iraq."
At the edge of a grassy field on the 45,000-acre base last week, soldiers and airmen from units across Virginia toted dummy rifles and gulped water. Among them were police officers and electricians, an Army band clarinetist and a father of six.
For many, political tussles over illegal immigration seemed far away and irrelevant. Staff Sgt. Darin Black, 41, a medic, chose to miss his first wedding anniversary to go to Arizona because he is "a professional soldier -- no matter what the mission." And Pvt. James Allport, 21, who hopes to serve in Iraq, is taking his camera to Arizona because "it does look nice down there, from all the pictures."
For others, the immigration issue played a part.
At one first-aid training station, 1st Sgt. Ward Moore watched as Pvt. Aram Christopher knelt over a soldier portraying a person in shock. A trainer barked questions: Should Christopher move the casualty's head to the side? What if the casualty has a neck injury?
Shock, Moore noted, is a condition not uncommon in migrants felled by heat and exhaustion. Training, he said, had included briefings on the border situation: the drugs smuggled across, the empty water bottles dotting the landscape, the so-called coyotes who promise clients a one-hour walk. And the bicycles abandoned by people who set out on quixotic rides only to be sidelined by rocky and scorching desolation.
"A lot of them have been sold a bill of goods," said Moore, standing with his arms akimbo. He recently bought a time share in Puerto Vallarta, he said, and saw muddy Mexican poverty around the corner from resorts where employees wash the trunks of palm trees. The border work, he said, is a "humanitarian-type mission."
Across the road, Roush watched Sgt. Timothy Bayless, 28, give a session on "operational awareness." Roush, a police officer, said thousands of troops along the border does not equal militarization -- it won't be "martial law or anything," he said -- but it will certainly help close the border. And that must be done, he said.
"We have a lot of drug trade that comes across there," Roush said. "We have people that aren't able to get jobs here. It's not necessarily supporting the economy."
In the shade by the first-aid station, Cpl. Rick Sommers had joined Moore. Sommers said he was border-bound for a host of reasons: He is concerned about terrorism and drugs coming into the United States and upset about illegal immigrants already in the country and the employers who hire them.
Sommers, a former firefighter from Appomattox, Va., said he has seen firsthand the use of public services by illegal immigrants -- who, he has heard, hurt the economy and use false Social Security numbers. The recent retiree had been thinking about joining the Minuteman civilian border patrol when the Guard called.
"If I did the things that they're doing, I'd be in jail," Sommers said of illegal immigrants. "Enough is enough."