Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced Monday that he would be deploying up to 1,000 National Guard troops south to the Mexican border.

Perry said in a release that the deployment will support the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) ongoing law enforcement surge known as “Operation Strong Safety.” The operation “is focused on combatting criminal activity in the region resulting from the federal government’s failure to adequately secure the border.”

Since 2008, more than 203,000 criminal aliens have been booked into Texas county jails. Over the course of their criminal careers, these individuals have committed more than 640,000 crimes in the state of Texas alone, including more than 3,000 homicides and nearly 8,000 sexual assaults.

“There can be no national security without border security, and Texans have paid too high a price for the federal government’s failure to secure our border,” Gov. Perry said in a statement. “The action I am ordering today will tackle this crisis head-on by multiplying our efforts to combat the cartel activity, human traffickers and individual criminals who threaten the safety of people across Texas and America.”