Over the last several years, the Herald-Leader has chronicled in detail the comings and goings of Kentucky National Guard soldiers who’ve been sent overseas to fight in the war in Iraq. But Kentucky guardsmen aren’t just being sent to assignments in the Middle East. They’ve also taken up a spot on the front lines of the country’s immigration debate — on the border between Arizona and Mexico. Kentucky guardsmen are among those helping the Border Patrol as it searches for people who are trying to enter the country illegally. The decision to send the National Guard to the border was a controversial one, and Kentucky has been sending units there for much of the last year.
This border duty intersects with another story we’ve heavily covered: the emotional debate
over the nation’s immigration policy, including national and local
ramifications. Because of this intertwining of story lines, we thought it was important to go to the border to see what these Kentucky units are doing.
In Sunday’s newspaper, Herald-Leader police reporter Steve Lannen (who also has written extensively about immigration issues in the last two years) and photographer Mark Cornelison will take you to the border with several Kentucky guard units. The pair produced this story in whirlwind fashion, catching a military plane to the border on Wednesday, spending all day Thursday near Sasabe, Ariz., with three Kentucky guard units and flying back to Lexington on Friday. Their story and photos appeared on Sunday’s front page, with a multimedia show on Kentucky.com.
Peter Baniak
metro editor
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