美国国家公共电台 NPR--El Paso officials say they need humanitarian assistance not the National Guard

（单词翻译）

El Paso officials say they need humanitarian¹ assistance not the National Guard

Transcript²

EL PASO, Texas — On a cold morning along the banks of the Rio Grande, young men in military camouflage³ carry rifles and stand beside Humvees.

They're members of the Texas National Guard. A line of razor wire that they erected⁴ separates them from Mexico.

A man and a woman from Peru approach and break down in tears when they see the guard members. They say they want to come into the country and seek asylum⁵.

"We didn't come to commit crimes. We didn't come to do anything. We just came to turn ourselves in," they say in Spanish.

The 400 Texas National Guard troops that arrived in El Paso this week don't have the authority to take these migrants - or others like them - into custody⁶. That's the U.S. Border Patrol's job, but guard leaders say they have a mission.

"In our rules in the use of force, we can serve as a deterrent⁷ in telling them to stop, in telling them to turn around and giving them an optic that they can't pass," says Major General Ronald Win Burkett, II of the National Guard.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott deployed⁸ the guards to El Paso to create what he called a "blockade" for people crossing into the U.S.

Local and state authorities at odds⁹

"We'll be here as long as the governor thinks we're adding value, we are serving as a deterrent," says Burkett, but the city and county leaders are clear — the National Guard is not helping¹⁰.

"We specifically told them we did not want them to send troops or militarize the border any further," says David Stout¹¹, a County Commissioner¹² and chairman of the Texas Border Coalition¹³, which includes elected officials and business leaders. "We told them we need humanitarian assistance and not this political game they're playing."

Stout, a Democrat¹⁴, says the Republican governor has not provided help with this crisis and many local officials agree. What they really need, they say, is help with things like shelter for migrants in winter weather, especially as temperatures are expected to drop below freezing soon.

Meanwhile, the National Guard's efforts may not be deterring¹⁵ migrants, as was the case with the couple from Peru. Border Patrol agents just directed them to another spot downriver, where they joined a line of migrants also seeing asylum.