Des Moines, Iowa — Governor Kim Reynolds led an hour-long briefing Wednesday morning to discuss the work groups of Iowa National Guard soldiers and state law enforcement officers did at the southern border in August.
Reynolds says it’s a crisis that the Biden Administration has ignored.
Iowa National Guard Adjutant General Stephen Osborn says his soldiers found their Texas counterparts were exhausted.
The 109 Iowa National Guard soldiers the governor deployed to Texas in August were involved in stopping nearly three-THOUSAND people who trying to cross the border illegally. Iowa Public Safety Commissioner Stephen Bayens says the officers from his agency who volunteered to go to Texas tell him what they saw was inhumane.
Twenty state troopers and nine special agents from the Iowa Department of Public Safety worked alongside Texas Highway Patrol and Texas Criminal Investigation Division. An Iowa Highway Patrol plane and two pilots who were in Texas during August provided a 40-thousand foot view of illegal activity at the border. Iowa State Patrol Captain Mark Miller was their supervisor in Texas.
Miller says in one case, officers stopped a semi for an equipment violation. Miller says it turned out the rig that looked like it was hauling sand was stolen.
Most of the troopers’ time was spent on smuggling routes, including a stint on Interstate 35 near Laredo, Texas. Governor Reynolds says she’s using federal pandemic relief money to cover the one-point-nine MILLION dollars spent to deploy all 112 Iowans to Texas for a month.
This is the second time Reynolds has sent Iowa law enforcement to the Texas border. In July of 2021, more than two dozen Iowa State Patrol officers deployed to Texas for two weeks.
