Just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, drug cartels fight each other for territory and clientele. This side of the border, politicians fight each other for elected office. The result? National Guard troops from Texas to Arizona.

The first wave of Arizona National Guard troops hit the Arizona borderlands in late August, installing about 30 of 560 troops to help out the Border Patrol along the Arizona-Mexico border.

“The best way to describe it is extra eyes and ears,” said Lt. Valentine Castillo, an Arizona National Guard spokesman.

In May, President Obama ordered the troops to aid the Border Patrol along the U.S.-Mexico border shortly after Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law SB 1070, which would compel all law enforcement agencies in the state to enforce federal immigration laws when practicable. However, a federal judge froze the most controversial provisions before the law took effect.

The National Guard troops will assist the Border Patrol in the field and in administrative positions. Most will work in the field at lookout posts or monitoring remote video cameras, Castillo said.

Although Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops will work independently, they will be in communication, said Border Patrol Spokeswoman Colleen Agle.

“We will not be doing joint patrols,” she said.

The National Guard will be operating fixed sites, such as permanent posts and monitoring remote video cameras along the border, she said. “Because they’re going to be operating in those capacities, they’re going to free up Border Patrol agents, and those agents will now be able to patrol the border.”

But despite the increased violence in Mexico and in border enforcement, apprehensions of illegal border crossers are on the decline.

A total of 194,000 suspected illegal immigrants had been arrested as of July, down from 205,000 during the same period last year.

Jennifer Allen, executive director of Border Action Network, an immigrants rights group, described the deployment as an overly simple and ill-conceived solution to a complex problem.

“For too long, we’ve used this sort of one-size-fits-all approach to all three of these issues in hopes that something will catch,” she said. “If we genuinely wanted to address the increasing power and violence of drug cartels, then we should be looking at the types of support we provide to the Mexican government.”

This is not the first time the National Guard has been deployed along the U.S.-Mexico border. Between 2006 and 2008, President George W. Bush ordered 6,000 troops along the U.S.-Mexico border for Operation Jump Start.

Tombstone Marshal Larry Talvy twice served in a leadership role as the first sergeant for the Guard’s southern sector, which stretched from Yuma to Casa Grande.

“This time around, it seems like the Guard Bureau took a little bit of time and said, ‘OK, what did we learn from last time that we can do better this time?’” he said.

Talvy said he expects some of the kinks during Operation Jump Start, such as occasionally patchy radio contact between the National Guard and Border Patrol, to be worked out.

“There were a lot of dead spot areas by radio, and they’d have to call by cell to the main office, and then they’d get a hold of a Border Patrol agent to come out there,” he said. “I believe that when they identified all these problems after we left, I think there was a big restructure.”

For Operation Jump Start, troops underwent one eight-hour day of training. For Operation Copper Cactus, the National Guard is requiring two to three weeks of training before deployment.

Still, as drug-related violence in Mexico climbs and U.S. border enforcement ramps up, apprehensions of illegal border crossers in the Tucson Sector, which covers most of the Arizona-Mexico border, have fallen.

“The thing is, right now, we are pretty slow,” Agle said. “Illegal alien apprehensions and drug seizures have gone down, and that’s across our 262 miles of border.”