Governor Lee Sending TN National Guard Troops To Southern Border

50 Tennesseans will spend the first part of the new year way down south. Governor Bill Lee said on Tuesday that he would be sending 50 members of the Tennessee National Guard to the southern border early next year. Lee’s press release stated that the guardsmen would be going down to the border to help address drug trafficking from Mexico into the United States. U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics, show agents have seized 190,000 pounds of methamphetamine and 11,000 pounds of fentanyl at the border over this last year. Tennessee has seen a recent spike in overdose deaths tied to fentanyl. Overdose deaths increased between 2019 and 2020 by 45%….with 2/3rds of overdose deaths attributed to fentanyl. Governor Lee’s order to send Tennessee National Guard troops to the border mirrors that of other republican governors this year…including the states of Florida and South Dakota.