Napolitano to visit San Luis border

FROM STAFF REPORTS
Aug 2, 2006

Governor Janet Napolitano and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will travel to the border today to visit with members of the Kansas National Guard who have been deployed to Arizona as part of Operation Jumpstart.

About 50 airmen from the 184th Civil Engineering Squadron, based out of Wichita, are helping with border-related engineering projects designed to help free up Border Patrol personnel to intercept people trying to enter the country illegally.

"Governor Sebelius has a unit down there so she will be visiting with them to see how they are doing," said Napolitano spokeswoman Pati Urias.

Operation Jumpstart is the name given to President Bush's call to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the border to help agents with logistical support and surveillance.

Units from Utah, North Carolina, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania have all sent troops to the Yuma sector.

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Gov.: Hearings at border just a waste of time

By Howard Fischer

CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES

PHOENIX — Gov. Janet Napolitano chided members of Congress Wednesday for holding hearings about border issues in Arizona rather than actually doing something about it.

"These hearings are a delay tactic," Napolitano said, calling the hearings — one in Yuma on Wednesday and another set for Phoenix today — "simply political events."

But the governor said her own trip to the border later today does not fit the same description. Napolitano will be escorting Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius whose state has sent 50 members of its National Guard to the border.

Both incumbents seeking re-election this year have come under criticism from foes who say they have not done enough to deal with the problem of people being in this country illegally. And there are other common threads.