that Perry's focus on border security allows him to shore up his tough on security bona fides in what has become a big moment for the Republican Party on immigration. Has the National Guard been sent to the border before ? Yes. The National Guard is already on the border but in smaller numbers. A recent and much larger instance was Operation Jump Start, a two-year deployment that began in 2006 to stem the more than 1 million people who were caught crossing the border each year. What is the situation on the border ? The Rio Grande sector, where most of the immigrant children are turning themselves into the border patrol, currently has 3,000 border patrol agents covering 320 miles of land and 250 miles of water, which equates to 5.4 agents per mile. The Tucson sector, for instance, has approximately 15.7 agents per mile. While the number of unaccompanied youth crossing the border has doubled to nearly 60,000 in the past year, the total number of immigrant crossings has mostly declined. About 1 million people have been caught crossing the border nearly every year between 1983 until 2006, but that number has dropped to about 400,000 in 2013. At the same time, resources for border security have steadily increased: More than 18,000 agents patrolled the border in 2013 compared to 10,000 a decade ago. And the amount spent on border security has more than doubled. The Customs and