Obama sends a team to the border to assess the need for the National Guard

The White House sent a team to Texas to determine if the deployment of the National Guard to the border will be helpful in dealing with the on-going border crisis in South Texas. The move comes at the end of President Obama’s western fund raising tour and two days after Texas Governor Rick Perry announced plans to deploy the Texas National Guard and Texas Air National Guard on a “Deter and Refer” mission to a small segment of the Texas/Mexico border.

The team, made up of officials from the Defense and Homeland Security departments, departed Tuesday and will be on the ground through Thursday. The White House had previously resisted calls from Republicans to deploy the National Guard to deal with the onslaught of migrants from Central America because most of the unaccompanied minors and others making the crossing were turning themselves in voluntarily.

But during a meeting with Texas Gov. Rick Perry earlier this month, Obama said he was open to ordering the deployment as a temporary solution. He directed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to send the team of evaluators to assess the situation, one White House official said. Perry, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016, said on Monday he would deploy up to 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the state’s border with Mexico to boost its security efforts in fighting illegal immigration.

Once President Obama finishes his western fund raising tour on Thursday, he is scheduled to meet with the leaders of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to discuss getting more cooperation relating to the problems of the large influx of child immigrants. This invasion of children has become a public relations black-eye for the White House and a humanitarian crisis that is currently overwhelming federal resources. Read more about the story here.