The Trump administration, as part of their ongoing effort to pretend immigration along our southern (and only southern) border is a "national emergency" allowing Donald and minions to swipe whatever money they want to swipe out of the federal till, has been commandeering national park rangers and sending them to the U.S.-Mexico border on rotating assignments.
What are they doing? We don't know. Why is it necessary to pluck park rangers from already-understaffed parks around the nation rather than, say, not doing that? We don't know. Is it working? Don't know. Even after a Freedom of Information Act request, the vast majority of the planning document describing their use is redacted. You're not allowed to know.
NPS “will not be disclosing any additional information about our officers assisting in the operations,” according to Jeremy Barnum, the [Interior Department's] chief spokesperson.
According to Mother Jones, we know that 47 Interior Department officers are currently stationed at the border. We know that the rotation effort has cost the National Park Service at least $1.7 million over the first year. And that's about it. The rangers may have been spirited to the border on Team Trump orders because they are among that most rare of public servants, ones who know how to use binoculars; this all may be an elaborate diversion and set-up that ends with Jared Kushner stealing Mt. Rushmore.
But it mostly feels like a pathetic little publicity stunt by Team Trump, desperate to feign a politically motivated "emergency" at the border and willing to use their authority to squeeze every federal department for the money and manpower to shore it up. The notion that Trump's administration is dispatching a few dozen park rangers at a time to Arizona, California, New Mexico or Texas on missions so sensitive and secret that they cannot possibly be publicly elaborated on, especially given this particular crowd's already-known history of abusing their departments, doesn't pass the smell test.