AUGUSTA – About 300 members of the Maine Army National Guard will travel to Arizona at the end of this month and in April to begin an engineering mission on the Mexican border.

The soldiers will do road construction, culvert work, construct fences and install lights, said Capt. Shanon Cotta, spokesman for the Maine National Guard.

The high-profile attention stems from President Bush’s May 2006 decision to send National Guard units from around the nation to assist U.S. authorities in fighting drug trafficking and illegal immigration.

The idea was to build roads and fences and operate surveillance systems.

Many areas along the border are susceptible to frequent road washouts from rainwater, which makes it difficult to patrol, Cotta said.

“We need to maintain the infrastructure on the border so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has the access and ability to patrol these areas,” Cotta said.

Approximately 150 Guard soldiers, predominantly from Company A of the 133rd Engineer Battalion, will leave on March 31 and return April 20. Another 150 Maine guardsmen, this time mainly from the Company C of the 133rd, will leave April 17 and return home May 5. Additional soldiers from the Headquarters Support Company and Company B of the 133rd and members of the 185th Engineer Support Company also will participate, Cotta said.

About 70 percent of the soldiers will work in Douglas, Ariz., while 25 percent will work in San Miguel, Ariz. The remainder will be stationed at headquarters in Tucson, Cotta said.

The border mission fulfills the soldiers’ two-week annual training requirement, which they normally perform during the summer months. Many soldiers in engineer units are carpenters, electricians and construction workers, so it actually works out better for many of the soldiers to leave Maine now rather than during their prime summer months, he said.

At present, four members of the Maine Air National Guard are on the border, and another three are set to leave in the next week, according to Maj. Debbie Kelley, community manager for the 101st Air Refueling Wing.

Members of the Bangor-based Air Guard unit will fly the soldiers down to the border for their mission, Cotta said.