Rep. Yvette Herrell renews call for National Guard deployment to New Mexico border

 U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-N.M., renewed her previous call for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to deploy the New Mexico National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Herrell, the lone Republican in New Mexico's congressional delegation, represents New Mexico's 2nd congressional district, which encompasses all of southern New Mexico. 

The congresswoman first made the request in April in response to large increases of traffic at the U.S-Mexico border and pressure on the U.S. Border Patrol, which Herrell described in her original letter as "overworked, undermanned and under-supplied." 

In 2018, Lujan Grisham's predecessor, Gov. Susana Martinez, deployed state guardsmen to assist Border Patrol with non-enforcement activities, at the behest of President Donald Trump (a fellow Republican), in response to an increase in unlawful border crossings and resistance in Congress to Trump's promised border wall. 

Weeks after taking office in 2019, Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, withdrew most of that deployment.