WASHINGTON — Instead of preparing for a coming deployment to Europe, soldiers with the First Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Tex., are checking IDs at the base’s entrance gates, filling in for troops who have been sent to the southwest border.
Nearby, a medical company is not getting ready for its overseas deployment, either; the soldiers are instead building aid stations in southwestern Texas.
And in Nogales, Ariz., public affairs officers who are supposed to be heading to Poland, Romania and Germany in April have spent the last month not studying the internecine rivalries that govern the former Soviet bloc, but fielding telephone calls from “The Daily Show” and other media asking if border troops are playing cards all day.