Photo By Maj. Will Cox | A view through the forward-looking infrared radar screen, monitoring Border Patrol...... read more read more
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CLAY NATIONAL GUARD CENTER, MARIETTA, Ga. – The Georgia National Guard volunteered to deploy to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley for 15 months, including all of 2014, to support the Border Patrol with aerial detection and monitoring, as part of Operation River Watch II.
“The reason why I do this job is because I know I am making a difference and keeping drugs off of the streets,” said Roy, the senior enlisted member of the Georgia Army National Guard. “As I support them from the air, I get to see how the Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents make a difference in our home town, as they apprehend truck loads of drugs headed to Georgia. It is rewarding assisting them in that effort.”
The Georgia Army National Guard assisted the Border Patrol apprehend 3,925 illegal aliens, turn back 1,022 illegal aliens and assisted in the apprehension of 3,196 pounds of marijuana along the Rio Grande Valley sector from Oct. 1, 2013 to Feb. 8, 2014.
Daniel Tirado, Public Affairs Officer and agent with the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol, was present when one of the Georgia Army National Guard’s LUH-72 Lakota Helicopters and crew provided air support to the brave men and women of the Border Patrol along the RGV sector.
“A safe arrest was made much easier for the Border Patrol agents because the aircraft, using their spotlight from above, pinpointed the suspects, which assisted the agents while navigating thick brush in that area to find and extract the suspects,” said Tirado. “As an agent on the ground, your visibility is limited to what you can see from your vantage point. But when you have an aircraft above, that can give you situational awareness of what is around you; it gives the agent a safer working environment.”
The LUH-72 Lakota Helicopter is a multi-role aviation platform fielded to the Department of Defense in 2006 to replace the UH-1 Iroquois, Huey and the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior.
“The aircraft can advise the Border Patrol agent if the activity appears to be illegal alien smuggling or narcotics smuggling. This helps agents respond with the appropriate amount of back-up, based on the number of suspects and the illegal activity the agent is about to interdict,” said Tirado. “The National Guard assets definitely add value to the important Border Patrol mission.”
The Georgia Army National Guard is part of Operation River Watch II and is tasked to conduct aerial detection and monitoring to disrupt transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking organizations in support of U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol Agents. Operation River Watch II is providing this air-centric augmentation to the Customs Border Protection as they increase capability with personnel and technology.
“The LUH-72 Lakota is the perfect platform for this mission,” said Ron, a Georgia Army National Guard pilot. “I flew this mission back with Joint Task Force Six as an AH-64 Apache pilot and now as an LUH-72 pilot. The AH-64 is designed for only two pilots, so you cannot put a Border Patrol agent on board. We also could not communicate directly with the Border Patrol agents, so we had to contact our Headquarters to relay any messages to the Border Patrol agent on the ground. Now I have a Border Patrol agent on board an aircraft that has the radios, allowing me to talk directly to Border Patrol agents on the ground, making us much more efficient. Plus, working with law enforcement is what I do at home. Guardsmen like me have been working with law enforcement for five plus years; we come ready with the experience necessary to partner with local law enforcement to become an effective team quickly. And that is why we apprehend so many aliens and so much dope night after night.”
The RGV sector is one of the biggest, covering 34 counties, 316 river miles and 317 coastal miles. According to CBP’s website the RGV sector accounted for 154,453 apprehensions, 37 percent of all apprehensions in the country, which is the most Border Patrol apprehensions in any sector. The RGV sector also seized 1,819 pounds of cocaine, 47 percent of all BP cocaine seizures nationwide, which is the most cocaine seized in any sector.
“One of the reasons the LUH-72 Lakota was purchased, was for its interoperability between the National Guard and civil authorities,” said Scott, the Georgia Army National Guard Officer in charge of operations in the RGV sector. “The radios on board the LUH-72 give us the capability to talk directly with local law enforcement agency on the ground. The LUH-72 allows us to carry a local Border Patrol Agent with local understanding and expertise, to make us more effective as we assist the ground Border Patrol teams. The LUH-72 also has forward-looking infrared radar, assisting in our efforts to support civil authorities in their search for suspects. These capabilities make us highly effective and provide the Border Patrol agent on the ground with amazing situational awareness that they would not otherwise have.”
Operation River Watch II, an air-centric surveillance approach to supporting the Border Patrol, saw significant improvements to the number of apprehensions and observations when compared to Operation River Watch I, a ground-centric surveillance approach. Operation River Watch II saw a 1,100 percent increase in apprehensions, 840 percent increase in observations and a 356 percent increase in marijuana seizures, when compared to Operation River Watch II. To put this in context, the RGV sector alone will have apprehended more illegal aliens in five months with an air-centric surveillance approach as compared to all of the sectors combined over a 30 month period when ground-centric surveillance was used.
“There are three primary characteristics needed to provide optimal support to the Border Patrol. One, it [the force] has to have the right capabilities, two, it has to have the right authority and three, it has to have the right relationships with both federal and local law enforcement. If it doesn’t have those three things it is not the optimal tool to support the Border Patrol mission,” said Col. Patrick Hamilton, director of the Texas National Guard’s Joint Staff. “The National Guard meets all of these requirements best when comparing it to other elements of the total Army Force. We are in a war on drugs on our southern border that reaches into our cities and communities across the country. The National Guard is the right force to support our local law enforcement in their communities or where ever the war on drugs reaches across the country.”
| Date Taken: | 02.18.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 02.18.2014 19:00 |
| Story ID: | 120769 |
| Location: | ATLANTA, GEORGIA, US |
| Hometown: | HARLINGEN, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 632 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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