All units: We need radar at the border. Send in the Iowa State Patrol!

It must be a bugger for Gov. Greg Abbott to acknowledge that the Texas Rangers can’t hack it anymore. Good news is that the Iowa State Patrol is on the way to help run radar at the border and do other top-secret things that nobody can discuss. Gov. Kim Reynolds last Thursday ordered 25 of Iowa’s finest to the border to fight crime and turn back the tide of refugees who, in fact, are already being turned back at the border by federal agents under the command of President Biden. Nebraska is sending 25 troopers, too, because Gov. Pete Ricketts and Reynolds are just two peas in a happy Republican pod responding to brother Abbott in his hour of need after he must have let things get out of control. Time was when the Rangers would sneer at a bunch of sodbusters patrolling the ranch. Politics being what they are these days, you roll with the message, which is: fear and crime and drugs and hordes rushing into El Paso. That was Reynolds message: “The rise in drugs, human trafficking and violent crime has become unsustainable. Iowa has no choice but to act.” On what is hard to say, since the state does not discuss these things. The troopers might be given a trowel to fulfill Abbott’s promise to build the border wall that President Trump could not. What they will not be doing is running I-35 or I-80 interdicting drugs, human trafficking and violent people with guns. That intersection is a central immigration and drug route. The Dallas County sheriff makes a living along the freeways and could use a little help from the folks in the silver cars to haul in the coke and meth. So could Buena Vista County Sheriff Kory Elston. He, along with many other sheriffs and the ISP, is alarmed by a rise in traffic fatalities, reckless driving and impaired driving fueled by the pandemic. He doesn’t have the staff to patrol state and U.S. highways. Davenport has been plagued by a rash of shootings. Waterloo, too. Of course, the local police and sheriffs always appreciate the assistance from their comrades in the patrol. Its roster has steadily been trimmed over the years, with just a half dozen troopers on state highways after 10 p.m. But for the next couple weeks the roster will be that much thinner. They might not be able to muster as much help for the next shooting. Instead, they will be parked along the Rio Grande listening to the radio chatter, for all we know, confirming that the border indeed is locked down. The refugees are being turned back to miserable camps on the Mexican side. Really. The children are allowed to enter, for their safety. When the Biden Administration asked for help in temporarily placing refugee children with relatives in Iowa, Reynolds replied: “It’s the president’s problem.” When the Administration flew 19 children into Iowa after her refusal, Reynolds worked up a good fit of indignance. Somehow, now, Texas has become Iowa’s problem. But it’s not, really. It’s all just for show. The troopers will do nothing. It was right for Nebraska to send them up to North Dakota for pipeline protest security, and to Minneapolis for security during riots following George Floyd’s death. This time, our Smokies will do the work of Texas or do nothing at all while ICE and the Border Patrol do the actual work of patrolling the border and detaining immigrants. We don’t know who picks up the tab. Our troopers should be at Davenport, Waterloo and Sioux City keeping drivers safe and fighting the bad guys. They should be on Highway 71 scouting for drunk drivers. They have no business at the border. Iowa already sent National Guard troops down there. Do we have to send Kirk Ferentz, too, with the Hawkeye offensive line? It does give me a dose of Iowa pride for Texas to ask little ol’ us for help because the Rangers can’t cover it. While we make myths we bust one down. Art Cullen is the publisher and editor of The Storm Lake Times. He won the the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2017 and is the author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.” Cullen can be reached at times@stormlake.com.