Top > World > 2006 > June > 2006-06-21

National Guard to Deploy in New Orleans

Louisiana?s governor agreed to send National Guard troops to beef up security in the city of New Orleans after weekend violence left six dead. The New Orleans police force is undermanned compared to what it was before Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, the rains from it causing floods and levees to burst. In the wake of Katrina, the National Guard had roughly 15,000 troops in New Orleans to restore order in the evacuated city, and Mayor Ray Nagin?s request for at least 300 National Guardsmen and 60 state police officers is an appeal for help to keep in order in a now rebuilding city.

Meanwhile, a city in neighboring Texas that took in refugees from New Orleans, Houston, had ten inches of rain fall overnight and floods snarled traffic all over the city. And the same rains that caused the flooding in Texas also forced the evacuation of a nursing home in Louisiana. Houston Mayor Bill White, flying over the city in a helicopter in an attempt to get a perspective on the situation, reported he saw ?block after block after block flooded.? This is in spite of drainage improvements made since Tropical Storm Allison five years ago struck the city.

The use of National Guard troops as law enforcement is not a regular practice, though the confluence of natural disasters and illegal immigration seems to be giving state governors reason to employ the National Guard more often. A recent U.S. government decision to send National Guard troops to help the United States Border Patrol catch illegal immigrants was soundly criticized by some who worried that the National Guard deployments to prevent illegal immigration were in effect a militarization of the United States-Mexico border, which Washington flat-out denied.