NEWS RELEASES
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved and first published through USAToday's website.
USA Today reports that the Trump administration has ordered national park rangers to the U.S.-Mexico border to fight illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Park rangers from as far afield as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska, the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Zion National Park in Utah, even the U.S. Virgin Islands, have been affected by the Department of Interior-Border Support Surge. The operation began in 2018 and is expected to continue through at least September 2020. The numbers of agents sent to the border is relatively small, dozens not hundreds, when compared to the nearly 20,000 Border Patrol agents employed by the government. Critics of the program say the park rangers are being diverted to the border at a time when the nation's national parks are desperately understaffed and overcrowded. Nearly all of the rangers sent to the border come from parks that currently have unfilled staff vacancies and are experiencing record numbers of calls for assistance. The park rangers, who are accustomed to ticketing speeding drivers or rescuing injured hikers, also have little to no training in border security tactics. Fewer than 1,800 law enforcement rangers currently watch over nearly 320 million visitors at the nation’s 419 national park sites. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a government watchdog group, found that the number of full-time National Park Service staff had decreased by more than 16% since 2011.
Read the full article in USA Today here.