The Associated Press
LAW AND ORDER REPORT
PHOENIX – The last National Guard soldiers assigned to protect the U.S.-Mexican border are scheduled to arrive in Arizona next week and leave by July 15 in the final act of a two-year mission to make the border more secure.
Operation Jump Start began in June 2006 and was designed to give the Border Patrol some breathing room until it could hire thousands of additional agents and build hundreds of miles of border fence.
Since the program began, about 4,500 border agents have been hired and 182 miles of fencing or vehicle barriers have been built. National Guard units put in about two thirds of the border barricades.
The Associated Press