AP: ‘Slow day:’ South Dakota National Guard emails don’t match Noem border ‘war’ talk

Call it a borderland personality disorder. Call it what you will.

Noem's justification for deploying South Dakota National Guard members to the Texas-Mexican border last year doesn't match the reality of those soldier's service on that mission, if Guard emails are to be trusted.

And there's still the question of the million dollar private underwriting of Noem's freebooting, that some saw as using the Guard as mercenaries.

On Friday, Stephen Groves reported for the Associated Press in ‘Slow day:’ Guard emails don’t match Noem border ‘war’ talk:

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem described the U.S. border with Mexico as a “war zone” last year when she sent dozens of state National Guard troops there, saying they’d be on the front lines of stopping drug smugglers and human traffickers.

But records from the Guard show that in their two-month deployment, the South Dakota troops didn’t seize any drugs. On a handful of occasions, they suspected people of scouting for lapses in their patrols, but mission logs don’t contain any confirmed encounters with “transnational criminals.” And a presentation from the deployment noted that Mexican cartels were assessed to be a “moderate threat” but were “unlikely” to target U.S. forces.

Some days, the records show, the troops had little if anything to do.

“Very slow day. No encounters. It has been 5 days since last surrender,” wrote one Guard member whose name was redacted from a situation report created as the deployment neared its end in September 2021.

For Noem, who is up for reelection Tuesday amid speculation she could be a 2024 White House contender, the deployment was an eye-catching jump into a political fight more than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) from her state. Noem justified the deployment — and a widely criticized private donation to fund it — as a state emergency. Dangerous drugs, she said, made their way to South Dakota after coming over the southern border.

But the documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington through an open records request cast doubt on whether the deployment was effective at stopping drug trafficking, even as Noem claimed that Guard members “directly assisted” in stopping it.

Most drugs don’t come through unwatched expanses of the border or the Rio Grande where the Guard members were stationed, said Victor Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol senior officer who is now a professor of criminal justice at the University of Texas at El Paso. They are smuggled into the United States at established border checkpoints, he said. . . .

During the two-month deployment, the Guard logged 204 people who were turned back to Mexico and 5,000 others who were apprehended by the Border Patrol to evaluate for asylum claims. Those apprehensions were a small fraction of the over 162,000 encounters Border Patrol reported during July and August in the Rio Grande Valley Sector — the 34,000-square-mile swathe where the Guard was stationed. . . .

Read the entire article at ‘Slow day:’ Guard emails don’t match Noem border ‘war’ talk.

Noem's attention-seeking came at a price to South Dakota citizens. In early May, Lauren White reported for  Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in Kristi Noem’s border stunt cost $1.5 million:

Governor Kristi Noem’s deployment of the South Dakota National Guard to the Texas border cost $1,451,699.59, according to new records obtained by CREW through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. 

The deployment, which was funded in large part by a $1 million donation from billionaire GOP donor Willis Johnson, immediately raised legal and ethical concerns by seemingly offering a private donor unprecedented control over the National Guard’s deployment. The rest of the deployment was likely covered by a state emergency fund. The costs covered salaries for 48 national guard officers, equipment including 11 humvees, flights to Texas and lodging. . . .

When a state legislator reached out to the South Dakota National Guard about the troubling nature of the deployment and donation, the SDNG replied that they had “no visibility as to rather (sic) or not the Department of Public Safety has ever received donations from public individuals for responses to State Emergency Actions.” An official also advised staff to “stay on their A game” when speaking about the deployment publicly because “people will be asking questions. Our position is we don’t discuss the donation.” Even though the donation may have been unprecedented, this official told staff that they had received a mission “just like every other.”

Multiple South Dakota officials insisted that using the donation was legal according to South Dakota state law. However, as multiple reports suggest Kristi Noem could be a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, it’s impossible to overlook the fact that a major Republican donor gave $1 million to support a political stunt because “he just wanted to help,” and that Noem spent nearly half a million dollars more in state funds.

The documents show plans to deploy the South Dakota National Guard troops to the area of Rio Grande City, Texas, roughly 1,300 miles south of South Dakota’s own southern border.  . . .

The reaction to the AP report was swift on South Dakota social media. Some examples:

.@KristiNoem treated the South Dakota National Guard as her own private army, available for hire.

Her publicity stunt to send our Guardsmen to the Texas-Mexico border cost South Dakota taxpayers $450,000.https://t.co/kRoXfxcnc4

— SD Democratic Party (@SoDakDems) November 4, 2022

Noem: The border is a “war zone"

Records: SD Guard found no drugs or "transnational criminals" during their 2-month deployment

Also, the National Guard + a Thune aid questioned the legality of SD using a $1M private donation to help pay for the deployment

By @stephengroves https://t.co/GLPtqliivA

— Arielle Zionts (@Ajzionts) November 4, 2022

Let’s be clear, the cost of that deployment—which appears to have been a political stunt—cost far more than the $1 million some rich out-of-state billionaire gave to us. It’s just another example of the Governor spending our public funds on her priorities rather than ours. ✈️ https://t.co/vxZIbNAPJR

— Reynold Nesiba (@ReynoldNesiba) November 4, 2022

Related posts

 

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• SD Searchlight: Noem’s sales-tax promise shows panic during a campaign that should be easy
• South Dakota Standard on Noem's economy

Image: From Dakota Free Press.

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