This article covers upcoming deployment.
I haven't come across overall Indiana sentiment on this yet
There are many things I'm unhappy about in this matter:
- Deployment of Indiana guard for something the federal government should be doing.
- Putting Indiana citizen soldiers in a very difficult position: having to deal with immigration policies in actual practice, political shenanigans, dealing with humanitarian issues when the primary mission isn't saving lives. We are good at war and helping save lives, anything else is asking for trouble.
- Combining immigration policy with border protection. I don't like that they aren't separate. I feel like it's all political games, but someone convince me that we can't control borders without barring all immigration.
- Crazy talk about federalizing a state's national guard.
- Crazy talk about States and federal government clashing to the point of escalation. I don't think cool heads and reason win the day anymore. I feel like the populous seems willing to support more extreme measures these days
- Separation of service members from their families
On one positive side, this will give 50 service members and their families a first hand view of a major topic instead of hearing it from the news.
This is dominantly why I hesitate to keep border security and immigration as the same issue in my mind. I know politicians will keep them together, but I don't think border security should be 'keeping out the illegals', I think it should be controlling everything/one coming in/out as best as possible. We also have a hard time finding contraband in shipping containers.
There's some pretty big fentanyl operations in China that keep the pipelines supplied. I wish we could get that a little more under control.