Iowa National Guard soldiers could be heading to California by October to help with border patrols. Guard spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Greg Hapgood says the recently got a list of needs from California and they want soldiers with skills in engineering, communications, intelligence, logistics and administration.
Hapgood says California is looking for soldiers in a support role for fence building, barricade building, surveillance, providing logistics expertise and administration of soldiers. Now that they know what is needed, Hapgood says the Iowa Guard is working to find the right soldiers.
He says they have a pool of several hundred volunteers they’re matching up with the requests from California, and Hapgood says if they don’t have the soldiers they need in the pool, they’ll ask for more volunteers. Hapgood says the Iowa soldiers could be in California later this fall.
Hapgood says they could process the soldiers early to mid September and send them to California by the first two weeks in October. The Iowa National Guard soldiers would be on a duty status in which the federal government would pay for them, but the soldiers would still be under the control of Iowa’s governor.