People around the country have demanded action from the Obama administration on border security since Barack Obama took office.  Arizona got tired of the White House not taking the problem seriously and passed a law to have their own police enforce the federal law.  Earlier this year, Obama sent National Guard troops to the border — and them said that they couldn’t enforce border security, but had to stick with drug interdiction instead.  Now Obama has finally sent the 1200 troops, but as Andrew Malcolm notes, helpfully included a timetable:

The Obama administration announced Monday that illegal immigrants from Mexico have until Aug. 1 to make it across the U.S. border before it gets really serious about border security with the deployment of 1,200 additional National Guardsmen there.  …

The Aug. 1 troop deployment, announced weeks ago and being implemented next month to supplement previous border efforts, comes just three days after Arizona’s tough new illegal immigrant enforcement is scheduled to take effect. The ACLU, Obama administration and government of Mexico, among others, are challenging the law in federal courts, seeking an injunction to halt the July 29 implementation, called S.B. 1070.

Here’s a thought.  Maybe we should have sent them weeks ago without telling people who want to cross the border when they’d arrive.  We could have just had them show up and catch border crossers instead of giving them two weeks’ notice about when the troops would arrive.

But that would take, er, what?  Competence.

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