The Army announced today that 1,200 National Guard troops will be deployed to the southern border to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol authorities as part of the Guard's Counterdrug program. They'll deploy to Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona. Before we get back into the immigration argument of last week, though, take a look at what the Guard will actually be doing:

The majority of the Guard members will support the Border Patrol with entry identification teams and support ICE with criminal investigative analysts, defense officials said. The criminal investigative analysts will assist ICE agents in reducing the flow of illegal bulk currency and weapons from the United States to Mexico.

Yes, that's right. The United States is deploying troops to its own border to stop the illegal flow of weapons and cash to Mexico: stopping goods from going north to south, not people going the other direction. It's an acknowledgement of the broader problem that we face on our border, and a sign that someone, somewhere, understands that the United States has had a big hand in fueling the escalating, demoralizing violence in Ciudad Juárez of late.

Of course, now that we're working to limit gun trafficking, the gangs in Mexico have moved to bombs:

American agents have been concerned for some time about military weapons and explosives falling into the hands of Mexican cartels. A report by the U.S. Bomb Data Center obtained by TIME describes how in February 2009 Mexican gangsters stole a large quantity of explosives and detonators from a site owned by a Texan manufacturer in the Mexican state of Durango. There were 15 to 20 assailants "armed with guns and machine guns, face cover and similar military wear" who overpowered security, the report said. "This incident has the potential for giving rise to further explosives-related incidents in the region."

One step at a time, I guess.

The timing of the announcement and the deployment is interesting; President Felipe Calderon, who is friendly with President Obama, just survived a mixed-results election in Mexico, where his conservative party won a few new states but lost a few others. His re-election in 2012 seems less and less likely without progress against the violence up north. Calderon has called repeatedly for the United States to acknowledge that the trafficking of guns across the border, particularly since the assault weapons ban expired in 2004, has been a boon to drug gangs.

This seems an obvious signal that the administration agrees. I'm glad to see it. I hope the enforcement actually focuses on reducing weapons and money trafficking. Reducing violence in Mexico would offer better opportunities there for its citizens, offering both the United States and Mexico a better solution to immigration problems than our usual flight-and-fight responses.