Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy says he wants to spend $1 million per month to send state guardsmen to the United States-Mexico border to help Texas officials in their fight.
Dunleavy is among a contingent of 25 Republican governors who have supported Texas Governor Greg Abbott in his efforts to secure the southern border amid a wave of record numbers of migrants entering the country. Approximately 988,000 encounters were recorded by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) between October and December 2023, with the number crossing 1 million this week in the quickest fiscal year timeline ever recorded.
Last weekend, governors from 13 states joined Abbott at the border to repudiate what they believe is federal government inaction: Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Utah.
Their visits followed a group of 26 Republican state attorneys general, including Treg Taylor of Alaska, warning the Biden administration in a letter to "get out of the way" in the southern border battle dispute.
"To send the [Alaska National] Guard down will cost us about—according to Adjutant General Saxe—about a million dollars a month for 100 folks," Dunleavy told reporters on Wednesday, according to the Alaska Beacon. "We'll test the waters with the Legislature to see if they're willing to fund that, and I wouldn't mind helping Texas with their issue on the border."
Newsweek reached out to Dunleavy's office via email for comment.
The governor added that he is not opposed to immigration and welcomes people in his state, but only if they come here legally.
"I think we need more people," he said. "I think we need more immigrants. And I've always said, build a strong wall with many doors, many ways to get into this country."
The Alaska National Guard has weighed sending 20 guardsmen and two helicopters that could be deployed to still-unknown areas of Texas as soon as late September, according to the publication.
As Alaska weighs the specifics of sending their own soldiers down south, more than a dozen Republican-led states began sending personnel and resources dating back to last August, with more possibly on the way.
A spokesperson for Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin told Newsweek late last month that the state deployed approximately 100 soldiers and airmen to Texas, saying the Biden administration's inability to curtail illegal crossings "has turned every state into a border state."
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Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek reporter based in Michigan. His focus is reporting on Ukraine and Russia, along with social ... Read more
