Governor Kim Reynolds is sending Iowa State Patrol officers to short-term duty at the southern borders of Texas and Arizona.
On June 10, the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona asked every state for emergency assistance in border security. Reynolds joins Republican governors from Nebraska, Idaho, and Florida in sending officers south.
Reynolds, in a written statement, said Iowa law enforcement officials are recovering drugs and weapons being smuggled across the nation’s southern border by drug cartels. In the first three months of this year, Reynolds said the amount of meth seized in Iowa was the highest it’s been since the first quarter of 2018. Fentanyl seizures are up more than a thousand percent in the first five months of this year compared to the same period in 2020.
A spokeswoman for Iowa’s Public Safety Commissioner says between 25 and 30 troopers will be reassigned to duty at the U-S/Mexico border for about two weeks. Following a request in October 2020, two dozen Iowa National Guard soldiers there now assisting various law enforcement agencies.
(This post was updated at 2:39 p.m. with additional information.)