The outgoing chief of the National Guard is doubling down on his recent criticisms of the service component’s long-troubled security mission on the U.S.-Mexico border, saying it’s a detriment to the Guard’s ability to wage war.
“The reason the Guard exists is to fight and win our nation’s wars, period,” Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the National Guard’s top officer, said in an interview with Military.com on Wednesday. “We can do stuff along the southwest border. But at the end of the day, that is [demands] on individuals not related to their military mission set.”
For decades, the National Guard has had some level of presence on the southwest border. But that mission was supercharged in Texas as part of Gov. Greg Abbott’s ongoing Operation Lone Star, which surged that state’s soldiers to combat illegal immigration in 2021. At its peak, 10,000 Guardsmen were part of the operation, which is in addition to a federal border mission of some 2,500 Guardsmen.
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Hokanson’s comments come after remarks to lawmakers on Capitol Hill in June in which he highlighted his concerns with the mission interfering with the Guard’s training requirements — already a significant obligation for units made up of mostly part-timers who have to maintain the same qualifications as their active-duty counterparts.
“There is no military training value for…
