The Trump administration said Monday that California Gov. Jerry Brown rejected terms of the National Guard’s initial deployment to the Mexican border, but a state official said nothing was decided. “The governor determined that what we asked for is unsupportable, but we will have other iterations,” Ronald Vitiello, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s acting deputy commissioner, told reporters in Washington. Brown elicited rare and effusive praise from President Donald Trump last week for pledging
400 troops to the Guard’s third large-scale border mission since 2006. But the Democratic governor conditioned his commitment on his state’s troops having nothing to do with immigration enforcement, even in a supporting role. Brown’s announcement last week did not address what specific jobs the California Guard would and would not do, nor answer the thorny question of how state officials would distinguish work related to immigration from other duties. READ MORE