As violence in the border region increased, Gov. Jan Brewer asked the federal government for additional help from the National Guard. After nearly a month, however, that request has not been granted, and the Governor's Office is not sure when to expect an answer.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on March 11, Brewer asked for 250 additional National Guard personnel for the Joint Counter-Narcoterrorism Task Force, which provides assistance to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Since then, the governor has not heard anything from Washington, D.C., about her request, but she has heard President Obama's administration lay out its own plans for fighting Mexican drug cartels and curbing cross-border violence.

On March 24, the administration announced stepped up efforts to combat drug-related violence in Mexico, where increased government efforts to battle the cartels have led to shootouts in the streets and assassinations of public officials. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security will distribute an estimated $700 million to improve law enforcement efforts in Mexico. The plan, presented by Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, also calls for more agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to be moved to the border.

"We know that when the White House released its plan for rearranging the current assets that they employ for homeland security and border issues that they did not rule out requests, so we're hoping to see some response here soon," said Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman. Brewer has not discussed the border situation with Napolitano, but Senseman pointed out that her request was sent to the Department of Defense, not Homeland Security.

Lt. Col. Almarah Belk, a spokesman for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said she was unsure whether Gates had made any decisions about Brewer's request.

Similarly, Texas Gov. Rick Perry requested an additional 1,000 National Guard personnel to help secure his state's border with Mexico. Perry lodged his initial request with DHS in January – nearly two months before Brewer made her own request – followed up with a letter in February and spoke with Napolitano on the phone in late March.

Napolitano had been scheduled to go to Texas to discuss hurricane preparedness on the state's coast, but cancelled the trip due to poor weather, according to Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger.

"We're still waiting to hear official word, one way or another," Cesinger said.

Task force personnel do not actually police the border or enforce immigration law. Rather, the participating National Guard troops assist law enforcement agencies by taking over responsibilities such as vehicle maintenance, computer work, monitoring, or anything else for which they have been trained, which frees up agency personnel for duties such as patrolling the border region.

In Arizona, the task force provides support for nearly two-dozen agencies, ranging from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the DEA to various sheriff's offices and municipal police departments.

Maj. Paul Aguirre, a spokesman for the Arizona National Guard, said the effectiveness of the 250 troops would depend on what resources they receive, and which agencies they were assigned to. But, he said, the troops likely would assist Customs and Border Protection, much as the task force assisted the agency during Operation Jump Start, a two-year deployment of the National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border that ended in 2008.

According to Rick Van Schoik, director of Arizona State University's North American Center for Transborder Studies, the addition of 250 National Guard troops to the task force could help provide an "early warning system" if the cartel-related violence in Mexico begins spilling over onto the U.S. side of the border.

The possibility of a spillover has been a frequent topic of discussion in Arizona, and Phoenix has been referred to as the kidnapping capital of the U.S., which is generally attributed to an increase in violence by drug trafficking and immigrant-smuggling organizations.

Van Schoik, however, believes the potential for spillover has been exaggerated, and he said the kidnappings that gave Phoenix its dubious distinction almost exclusively affect people who are already involved in drug trafficking or illegal immigration. The kidnappings, he said, are often a case of immigrant smugglers, known as coyotes, holding the immigrants for ransom after crossing into the U.S.

"I frankly think there's a remote chance that any of the drug violence is going to spill to the U.S. I think we see an escalation of media attention to it," Van Schoik said. "But I just don't see shootouts or other overt violence coming into the U.S., the way some people do."

Oscar Martinez, a border expert and history professor at the University of Arizona, agrees with that assessment.

"There's a concentration of drug activity – drug smuggling, drug trafficking, stash houses – and people involved in all of that, so naturally there's going to be those kinds of incidents (like kidnappings). But the issue of the spillover of violence from Mexico into the U.S. is highly exaggerated," Martinez said.

But Van Schoik does believe that adding 250 National Guard troops to the task force would make a noticeable impact by freeing up federal agents in the border region to do what they are trained to do – fight narcoterrorism. The agents are well trained to combat drug violence, he said, but they can't catch drug traffickers if they aren't able to act on the intelligence they gather. The border and ports of entry have been understaffed, Van Schoik said, and Operation Jump Start was effective.

"It does, I think, help combat narcoterrorism – narco-insurgency, we call it – in that the thing that seems to be missing more than anything is actionable operational intelligence, and if the CBP (Customs and Border Protection) officers are freed up to pursue the intelligence that they have, they may be more effective," he said.

Obama has said that he is considering putting more National Guard personnel on the border, but has expressed apprehension as well. At such an early stage in Obama's presidency, Van Schoik said it is difficult to determine what direction he might go with regard to border policy, but so far DHS appears to be taking a more comprehensive approach to problems in the border region than it did under President Bush.

If Brewer's and Perry's requests were turned down by Gates and Obama, it could be business as usual at the border, Van Schoik said. On the other hand, it could just be indicative of a larger strategy that relies more heavily on agencies such as the DEA and ATF, whose numbers in the border region are increasing. So far, he said, it is too early to tell what the role of the National Guard will be in that strategy.

"I do think that business as usual under (Napolitano) and this DHS is different than business as usual under the pre-Obama DHS. So I don't think it's as simple as saying things will continue the way they are. I think that already they have shifted resources in ways we can't perceive yet," Van Schoik said. "I don't think we should assume … if the request is turned down that it's unwarranted, that they haven't truly considered it."