800 National Guard troops are patrolling the US-Mexico border on Trump's orders, but they aren't allowed to look across it with binoculars

U.S. Border Patrol Agent Marcus Trujillo/U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Public Affairs

• Roughly 800 National Guard troops stationed at the US-Mexico borders are part of Trump's efforts to combat a "drastic surge of illegal activity on the southern border."
• Troops provide helicopter support to Border Patrol agents, pave roads, perform vehicle maintenance, and monitor surveillance.
• Although the National Guard's presence at the boarder is to help look out for suspicious activity, they are prohibited from looking south of the border through binoculars or any other magnifying technology. 

The National Guard troops standing watch along the United States' southwest border may find themselves curious to know what great mysteries lay beyond the muddy waters of the Rio Grande...but alas, federal law forbids them from using their state-of-the-art surveillance equipment to find out.

While the roughly 800 guardsmen holding the line in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona are permitted to use their naked eyes to peer across the divide, the legal basis for President Donald Trump's National Guard deployment prohibits the troops from peeping southward through a pair of binoculars — or any other piece of technology that makes things appear closer than they actually are.See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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