Dear Florida: No, Thanks.

More performative b.s. https://t.co/Ycwae1xQ87

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) May 22, 2023

We've already sent the Texas National Guard to the border.  It didn't go well.  It wasted resources, destroyed morale, caused some to go AWOL, and accomplished nothing, not even a good photo op.

I'm gonna be generous and say you've got 60 people in that picture.  The Texas/Mexico border is 1254 miles long.   According to the Congressional Research Service Florida has 1350 miles of coastline (the state borders are not really open to other countries like international borders or coastlines are).  I can't imagine Florida would be touting the ability of 60 people to protect the coastlines of Florida, or even significantly augment such protections.

Florida is going to add one person for every 20 miles.  With no legal authority in Texas, and no authority equivalent to the Border Patrol, at all.  And they, too, will while away the days, bored stiff and useless.

This is the story of a task force that left soldiers at isolated observation posts for hours on end without the night vision goggles they needed. They stared into the darkness and fell asleep on the job while awaiting shipments of equipment for months, and only assisted in less than one in every five apprehensions. Legal restrictions on the use of Guardsmen left them with little more than watching as a mission. Army Times interviewed seven Guard troops involved in the mission and obtained hundreds of pages of documents and audio tapes, including official incident reports and planning documents.

Among Army Times’ findings:

When troops weren’t on duty, most were at hotels in remote locations. Alcohol and drug abuse became so widespread that senior leaders issued breathalyzers and instituted alcohol restrictions that tightened as the misconduct incidents piled up.

Leaders initiated more than 1,200 legal actions, including nonjudicial punishments, property loss investigations, Army Regulation 15-6 investigations and more. That’s nearly one legal action for every three soldiers. At least 16 soldiers from the mission were arrested or confined for charges including drugs, sexual assault and manslaughter. During the same time period, only three soldiers in Kuwait, a comparable deployment locale with more soldiers, were arraigned for court-martial.

Troops at the border had more than three times as many car accidents over the past year — at least 500 incidents totaling roughly $630,000 in damages — than the 147 “illegal substance seizures” they reported assisting.

One cavalry troop from Louisiana was temporarily disbanded due to misconduct and command climate issues — an extremely rare occurrence.

A 1,000-soldier battalion-level task force based in McAllen, Texas, had three soldiers die during the border deployment. For comparison, only three Army Guard troops died on overseas deployments in 2021, out of tens of thousands.

Perhaps nowhere were the issues more evident than in McAllen, where nearly two battalions’ worth of troops lived, led by a single understrength battalion command team that required additional help and manpower.

“We are literally the biggest threat to ourselves down here,” said one staff officer who served on the mission. 

Yeah, let's do that again.