Border Security

After two years spent supporting the Border Patrol, performing jobs that have included surveillance, air transportation, building and fixing border fence and repairing roads, the National Guard begins pulling out Sunday, with the last of the personnel leaving in July. Their work was part of a Bush administration project dubbed Operation Jump Start, begun with the idea that the National Guard's assistance with nonenforcement jobs would allow the Border Patrol to use more of its agents for patrol while it went about boosting its staff to 18,000. As many as 6,000 guardsmen, some just back home from overseas deployment, volunteered along the southern border the first year, with about 1,200 of those in California. Their numbers were halved last year as the operation wound down.

• JJ Commentary: Just what we need – reduced border security. The bad gets even worse.