YUMA, Ariz. — Staff Sgt. Chris Cazares is panting to catch his breath after slicing down a salt cedar on the banks of the Colorado River with one of those orange-handled saws commonly used in school shop class.
A supervisor at a nursing home, the longtime soldier in the Army National Guard was previously deployed twice to Iraq, where he specialized in neutralizing chemical attacks. Now he is deployed to his hometown on Arizona’s border with Mexico. Here, he is neutralizing trees.
Cazares is one of roughly 600 guardsmen serving on the border in Arizona since President Trump dispatched the National Guard last April in support of Customs and Border Protection. Numbering about 2,200 as of early this month, the guardsmen Trump supplied from across the nation answer to the governor of the state in which they are deployed. The active-duty troops the president sent to the border last fall now number about 4,350; they report to U.S. Northern Command.
View the complete February 16 article by Paul Sonne was posted on The Washington Post website here.