John Hickenlooper says he’d “certainly look at” any request to send Colorado troops to U.S.-Mexico border

Gov. John Hickenlooper says he hasn’t been asked by the Trump administration to send Colorado’s National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, but that he would “certainly look at it” if the call were to come.

“In the past, Colorado has sent troops to the border for specific purposes, and generally those troops have stayed under the authority of the governor,” the Democrat told reporters Thursday. “I think we’d certainly look at that. We are Americans.”

President Donald Trump has said he wants to send as many as 4,000 National Guard troops to secure the border, specifically to halt drug-trafficking and illegal immigration. The governors of Arizona, Texas, California and New Mexico have all agreed to deploy troops under the president’s request.

California’s Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, however, said in a letter Thursday that soldiers from his state will not be used to build a new wall or “to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life.”

He added: “And the California National Guard will no be enforcing federal immigration laws.”

When asked if he would follow Brown’s lead in imposing a conditional deployment if Colorado troops were to be sent to the border, Hickenlooper did not specifically say.

“We would look at each situation and make sure there was an appropriate use of our National Guard,” Hickenlooper said. “Beyond that, I’d be answering hypotheticals. Let’s see what the request is. If it’s something that makes sense and that is within the purview of what our National Guard really is intended to do, I would certainly look at it — I would try to look at it on a fact-based — as each individual situation.”

Hickenlooper said he didn’t see the need for troops on the border right now.