WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush will announce plans on Monday to deploy thousands of National Guard troops along the U.S.-Mexico border to support efforts to catch more illegal immigrants, as he tries to placate conservatives demanding a tougher policy.
Bush is to address Americans for about 20 minutes from the Oval Office at 8 p.m./0000 GMT to announce increased security along the 2,000-mile (3,219 km) U.S. border with Mexico, and to insist a temporary guest-worker program loathed by many conservatives is needed as part of an overall reform of immigration law.
The U.S. Senate renews debate this week on a sweeping immigration overhaul that would couple tougher border enforcement with a temporary guest-worker plan and create a mechanism for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country to legalize their status.
Bush's support for the proposed law is costing him support among some conservatives who view it as a type of amnesty for illegal immigrants -- a characterization Bush rejects.
White House officials described the National Guard deployment as temporary and said the troops would not be involved in law enforcement. Some members of the U.S. Congress feared the National Guard, with 17,000 in Iraq, will be stretched too thin, and Mexico worried about militarizing the border with armed soldiers.
A senior U.S. official said Bush planned to announce the deployment of about 5,000 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexican border.
White House officials said the troops will provide logistic support for U.S. Border Patrol agents whose job is to arrest illegal immigrants crossing the border into the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.
The troops' work would include mobile communications, intelligence analysis, logistics and training, a senior defense official said.
White House counselor Dan Bartlett said less than 2 percent of 400,000 Guardsmen would be used, meaning under 8,000 -- a dramatic increase from the roughly 300 currently deployed.
The Border Patrol arrested nearly 1.2 million people last year trying to cross the Mexican border and estimates that 500,000 others evaded capture.
Overstretched Military
Even before Bush's plan was announced, some Democrats called it politically motivated and worried that deploying National Guard troops to the border would stretch too thin the U.S. military, already fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told CNN that Bush was late to the border enforcement debate, "so now, coming forward at this time, we're a little suspect."
A Pentagon official said the mobilization may add extra stress to the National Guard, but it would be "manageable."
The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a citizens' volunteer border patrol group, called Bush's plan "nothing more than a political ploy."
"President Bush's political maneuver will do nothing more than place career desk jockeys and support personnel in a very dangerous environment and will greatly anger the American people," said Minuteman President Chris Simcox.
White House spokesman Tony Snow denied Bush was pushing tougher border security for political cover.
"I think it's really more about political opportunity," Snow told reporters.
Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, a potential contender in the 2008 presidential race who helped broker compromise immigration legislation to be debated on the Senate floor this week, was skeptical.
"We have stretched our military as thin as we have ever seen it in modern times," Hagel told ABC's "This Week."
The prime-time address -- the first time Bush has used the Oval Office for a speech on a domestic topic -- comes two weeks after millions of immigrants and their supporters rallied across the United States in support of the Senate legislation.
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