The Obama administration is developing plans to deploy up to 1,500 National Guard troops along the southwestern border in an effort to step up the US military's anti-drug efforts there, the Associated Press reported, citing administration sources. Some 575 National Guard troops are already deployed there to support border law enforcement in a program that has been ongoing for years.

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Administration officials said the program was a stopgap measure designed to last for only a year until civilian law enforcement could be beefed up. The administration has already announced plans to hire 1,500 additional border agents. The National Guard program would be federally funded and would draw on National Guard volunteers from the four states that border Mexico: California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Guard duties would include surveillance, intelligence analysis, and aviation support, but would not include direct law enforcement duties.

"We have been working very closely to build a set of options that would have the Department of Defense in a very limited way, for a limited period of time, serve in direct support for CBP," said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul Stockton, referring to Customs and Border Protection.

The move comes just months after President Obama vowed to Mexican President Felipe Calderón that the US would help Mexico confront escalating prohibition-related violence, in which nearly 11,000 people have been killed since Calderón unleashed the Mexican military against the country's powerful drug trafficking organizations in December 2006. It also comes just three weeks after Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced a new southwest border counternarcotics strategy that will devote more federal resources to fighting the Mexican drug trafficking groups.

Undersecretary of National Protection at Homeland Security Rand Beers told the AP the administration has proposed spending $250 million on the program, but that the precise cost will not be known until all the details are worked out.