Iowa joins other states in sending state troopers to Texas to help at border

DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa will send up to 30 state police officers on a two-week deployment to Texas after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds agreed to a request from GOP governors to help fight crime at the U.S.-Mexico border, officials said Thursday.

A statement from the Iowa Department of Public Safety did not say when the deployment of the officers would begin or how they would be chosen. The officers will assist the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Reynolds said she agreed to the deployment, following similar moves by Republican governors in Nebraska, Florida and Idaho, after receiving assurances from the department that the absences “will not compromise our ability to provide all the necessary public safety services to Iowans.”

Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Ducey of Arizona earlier this month requested help at the border from other states under an interstate compact to provide mutual aid during emergencies and disasters.

“My first responsibility is to the health and safety of Iowans and the humanitarian crisis at our nation’s southern border is affecting all 50 states,” Reynolds said in a statement. “The rise in drugs, human trafficking, and violent crime has become unsustainable. Iowa has no choice but to act."

The deployments will affect about 5% of the state's approximately 550 sworn officers and come in an unusually difficult year for Iowa public safety.

Earlier this month, state patrol officials warned that traffic fatalities were spiking on Iowa roadways due to increasingly dangerous driving and vowed that they would step up enforcement.

The year has also seen the first Iowa trooper shot and killed in the line of duty in decades, an exhaustive search for a missing boy that remains ongoing, an attack in which inmates killed two prison workers, and a shooting that wounded a deputy.