[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 48 (Tuesday, March 25, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H2302-H2307]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to bring to the attention
of the body another group of people that I would like to bring into
what we are now calling the homeland heroes. These are folks whose
daily lives confront them with incredible stresses and challenges far
different than what their business had provided them with to begin
with.
They started out ranching, and that is a difficult task in and of
itself. But after generations in that particular industry and living in
the same area on the border of Mexico, living in Arizona, many of the
people who reside there are now living in what we can, I think,
accurately describe as a war zone. Every week I have been bringing to
the House the names and pictures of those people that I want to induct
into this homeland heroes hall of fame, I guess is the way we will
describe it.
Tonight I want to talk about Rob and Sue Krentz, who own and operate
a ranch located on the far southeastern corner of Arizona, about 12
miles north of the U.S./Mexico border and 25 miles northeast of the
city of Douglas. They are third-generation ranchers. This ranch has
been in their family since 1907.
Rob and Susie Krentz have three children they raised on that ranch.
Their two sons, Andrew and Frank, attend New Mexico State University,
and their daughter, Kyle, is a high school senior.
The Krentz family story is similar in many ways to the experiences of
hundreds of other ranchers in this border region. Yet to them and their
children it is unique and it is personal and dreadful in the impact it
has had on their lives and the future viability of their way of life as
ranchers.
Just one tiny statistic that begins to tell the story of what these
folks face every single day. In the month of November, 2002, in the
Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, which includes Cochise County,
where this the Krentz ranch is located, the Border Patrol apprehended
23,000 border crossers.
That was in the month of November. It is anybody's guess as to how
many people actually come across, but many, many people would suggest
that the ratio is just about maybe one in five, and that is a very
conservative estimate, that for every one person we apprehend on the
border, at least five get through. Again, I think it is closer to one
in ten, but I will accept even this
[[Page H2303]]
very, very conservative estimate, that for every one we get at the
border apprehended, five go by them.
This means that in just the month of November near this ranch and
over their property, when we had 23,000 apprehended, using the
conservative estimate of one to five, it meant that 115,000 people
cross the border illegally, that same area. We are just talking about
one little chunk of the border, the Tucson Sector.
That means if we project that out over the course of a year that
1,300,000 people come across that border in that sector. I guarantee
that is a conservative estimate, but let us use it. One million three
hundred thousand people coming across that border and coming across the
lands of the people that live there, including the Krentz family.
I had the opportunity to spend some time down there just a few weeks
ago, and I can attest to the fact that on any given evening one can
watch dozens and dozens of illegal aliens trespassing across the land.
The Krentz family will call the Border Patrol to come and intercept
them. Sometimes the Border Patrol will come; sometimes they will not.
Mr. Krentz estimates that over the past 5 years his family has
suffered a loss of at least $300,000 a year due to cut fences, stolen
and damaged vehicles and farm equipment and damage to the rangeland
itself. This is very, very delicate land. It is desert land. It is
something that has to be conserved and protected; and when we have got
1,300,000 coming across there every year, believe me, it is not being
conserved and protected. It is being destroyed.
The Krentz ranch has 1,000 head of cattle. The continual movement of
people across that domain constantly disturbs the livestock, impacting
their own value, and sometimes somethings happen that are even worse.
In February of last year, for instance, a calf was butchered by illegal
alien trespassers. Two men responsible were caught. They were tried.
They were found guilty. They served a total of 51 days in jail. They
were also ordered to pay $200 in restitution to the Krentz ranch. The
Krentz ranch has not seen a cent of that money; and, of course, our
best guess is they will not because these people have been released.
They came back into the population either up here or have returned to
Mexico.
These losses that are estimated in the neighborhood of $300,000
include damage and disease that comes into the water tanks and the
waterlines on their ranch. The family and their employees cannot drink
out of the water tanks any longer because of the disease that happens
to be in the water on the land brought in by illegal alien trespassers
and the damage done by purposeful, deliberate vandalism.
The estimated value of the water that has been lost on their property
to date is $4 million. In June of 2002, the Krentz brothers discovered
two separate instances of damaged waterlines. Illegal aliens had broken
the two-inch PBC waterline in order to get drinking water. The Krentz
ranch waterline runs for 40 miles and is one of the best gravity-flow
waterlines in the State of Arizona. Because of these two breaks in the
long pipeline, several hundred thousand gallons of precious water were
wasted.
The Krentz family continually has to deal with threats, physical
threats, from illegal border crossers. Recently, a family member came
upon a group of 39 trespassers and was threatened by them when he asked
them to turn around and get off his land. He returned home, called the
Border Patrol, and they did come and apprehend them. But we both know
what happens is they put them into a revolving door near the border and
in a few days or in a few hours many times they are coming right back
across the border.
The Krentz family members are not vigilantes. They do not try to
apprehend illegal aliens by force. They do not carry arms for their own
protection. They will always call the Border Patrol when they observe
trespassers. They and the other ranchers are trying to follow the law
and work with the Border Patrol, and all they want from their own
government is to enforce the law as well as to protect them and their
property, and that is what we owe them. I mean, they are only asking
the minimum, protect their lives and property from people coming across
that border, from this invasion.
And there are no two ways about it. That is an appropriate word to
use to describe what is happening on our southern border especially. It
is an invasion, and they are asking their government to protect them
from that invasion.
I want to salute Rob and Susie Krentz, Phil and Carrie Krentz as
homeland heroes who are bearing the brunt of an invasion of over a
million illegal aliens crossing our southern border. We need to
understand their plight. We have a moral obligation to do something
about it.
Now for the rest of my time I would like to talk about another aspect
of the issue of illegal immigration, and we are going to be doing this
for the next several weeks, going to be taking this issue and breaking
it down into, I think, more understandable parts. We are going to be
explaining its various aspects because I will assure the Members this
is one of the most complex, this is one of the most challenging aspects
of domestic policy. It has ramifications that go on and on and on. They
will affect every aspect of our life.
Massive immigration into this country, as I have said on many
occasions, combined with a pernicious multiculturalist attitude and
philosophy in this country is a cocktail mix of dangerous components.
The one component we are going to talk about tonight, the one part of
this picture that we are going to focus on this evening is the issue of
our national security, the threat that exists to the United States of
America as a result of the fact that our borders are porous and that
people can and do cross them at will.
There was a time that the United States of America could be seen as
somewhat naive, and because we were protected by two oceans we felt
that the world was a place of general safety for us and that we really
did not have to be too concerned about borders. There was always
illegal immigration into the United States. That has certainly been the
case, but it never reached a level that posed a threat to the Nation's
existence.
It now has reached that level, not just, as I say, because of the
fact that we have far more people coming across these borders than ever
before in the Nation's history and into our ports and into our
airports, people who come here legally but then overstay their visas,
which comprise about 40 percent of the maybe 13 to 20 million people in
this country here who are here illegally, but the southern border
alone, as I mentioned earlier, is a place of enormous illegal
immigration. The numbers are just staggering.
What is very, very worrisome is that in the last several years there
has not just been an increase in the number of Mexican nationals coming
across the border, but there has been an alarming number of people who
are classified as OTM. This is ``other than Mexican'' coming across our
border, coming from all over the world. This phenomenon has been
observed and has been noted by the Border Patrol, and they have talked
about it. They have indicated that there is a change going on and that
this is a strange situation because, all of a sudden, through that
southern border and our northern border with Canada, we are seeing
people come from many Middle Eastern countries, from Asian countries,
many from South America, specifically from a place called the tri-
border region.
Let me tell the Members about this. The tri-border region is an area
that is really the borders of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, and
there is a very large group of Muslims in that area, a very large
Muslim population in that area.
{time} 2000
Over the last decade or so, without much attention being paid to it,
there has been an enormous increase in the number of Muslims living in
South America, and even in Canada. Many of them, in the millions, live
in this tri-border area. It has become a place through which now we are
seeing a great number of people transiting from Middle Eastern
countries into Brazil, getting Brazilian documents, then coming north
into the United States through Mexico.
When we intercept them, we chalk them down as Brazilian. But we are
[[Page H2304]]
finding that they are not really Brazilian. For the most part, they are
Middle Easterners coming from places throughout the Middle East. Brazil
is a very eclectic country. It is a place where it is difficult to look
at someone and say, you are from Brazil. It is not that easy. So people
who are Middle Eastern can easily be characterized as Brazilian,
especially if they are carrying Brazilian passports and Brazilian
papers.
But we have had this enormous increase in the last couple of years,
it goes off the charts, of Brazilians intercepted at the boarders. It
is up in the thousands.
Our Border Patrol people are saying, what is this all about? How come
we are seeing so many people from this area? It is because that is the
area that actually provides the funnel from the Middle East through
South America up into the United States across the Mexican border.
As a matter of fact, there is a statement that I think is certainly
worthy of us spending a few minutes on here. Here is the quote. It
comes from the National Commission on Terrorism established in the year
2000: ``The massive flows of people across the U.S. borders makes
exclusion of all foreign terrorists impossible.''
Now, this is not an amazing quote, not a very profound quote, but
something we should pay attention to. This was a commission established
to look into the issue of terrorism. What they are essentially saying
is, because so many millions of people are coming across our borders
illegally, that we cannot possibly hope to defend ourselves from
terrorists coming into the United States.
Is that not an incredible statement, when you think of it? On the one
hand, it is completely logical. It is certainly truthful, we all know
that is true, because the ``massive flows of people across the U.S.
borders,'' this makes the exclusion of all foreign terrorists
impossible. ``Duh,'' as the kids say, sure that is the case.
What are we going to do about it? What kind of a challenge does this
pose to us? This is 2000. This is before 9/11, remember. So, this
particular statement, along with the entire commission report, as far
as I know, was tossed into File 13, because no one wants to hear this.
No one wants to deal with this.
No one in this body, no one in the administration, really wants to
tackle this issue, because, you see, they know that if you try to stop
people from coming across that border, if we actually try to defend our
borders with our military, which is absolutely necessary, which any
country on the face of this Earth would do in these circumstances, any
sane policy would tell us that if you are going to be fighting wars
halfway around the world and you are doing it today with the new kind
of threat we face, that it is not just the war on the battlefields of
Iraq that we have to be worried about; it is also the United States of
America, the homeland; and just creating a Department of Homeland
Defense does not in fact create a defense of the homeland.
It may create the illusion of a defense by the name, but that is it.
Because there is no way that that department, funded at the levels that
are anticipated, could possibly deal with this one statement, ``the
massive flows across the United States border makes it impossible to
exclude terrorists.''
They could not deal with it. They need technology. We need the
military. We need the military on the border. Maybe at some time in the
future we will have a homeland defense agency that is so competent, so
technically advanced, using the best kind of monitoring devices and
cameras, and even the low-tech stuff of things called walls and fences;
yes, fences. You know, we actually can employ that low-tech type of
device to stop a lot of what is happening here.
But we will not even do that, and the reason is because we do not
want to stop illegal immigration. That is the dirtiest little secret
that passes around this place periodically: We do not wish to stop
illegal immigration. That is this government's policy. It is to allow
that flow, for a variety of reasons.
On one side we have a political party, the Democratic Party, that
sees that flow as a source of support for their political party, that
eventually those people will turn into supporters of the Democratic
Party, as tradition has certainly proven, that immigrants into the
United States, at least for a generation maybe or so, tend to vote
Democratic. So the Democratic Party sees that as a source of support.
They also, of course, have to cater to a very strong minority group
within their own party who wants open borders, who wants illegal
immigration.
On our side, unfortunately, we have a problem also, because there are
a lot of people who look at illegal immigration as a source of cheap
labor. I certainly hear from a lot of folks who tell me all the time
that they would not be able to open their business, their dry cleaning
establishment, their restaurant, their hotel, unless they had illegal
aliens working for them.
This is amazing. Today, in the Denver paper I was reading, flying out
here from home, it talked about a job fair, a job fair held in Denver
over the weekend. Something like 6,000 people attended. There were
maybe 400 jobs available. Six thousand people attended, maybe 400 jobs
available.
But I hear from people all the time that tell me they simply cannot
hire any ``American willing to do the work.'' I have a neighbor who has
been unemployed for over a year. He was at first employed in the high-
tech industry, very, very competent individual, very significant job
with a very good salary. He has been unemployed. That industry,
everybody knows what is happening to it. He is right now doing data
entry work and driving a limo to try to keep food on the table and a
roof over their heads. I hear all the time that we do not have
Americans who will do these jobs, these other jobs.
There was another article in the paper not too long ago in Denver
that talked about the fact that one restaurant, the Luna Restaurant, a
Mexican restaurant on 38th and about Lowell, put an ad in the paper for
a $3-an-hour waiter position. They had 600 applicants the first day for
that one job. Six hundred applicants for one job at $3 an hour. Are all
600 of those applicants illegal aliens? I do not think so.
I think there are a lot of American citizens who want those jobs. I
think right now American citizens are in competition with those people
coming in across the border, but in fact employers want to pay people
less. That is natural. Unfortunately, many employers want to exploit
their employees. We see accounts of this happening all the time. So,
they want illegal immigration, they want porous borders. They do not
want anybody stopping their flow, even if this means that it is
something that could pose a danger to this country, and it does pose a
danger to the Nation.
It is a very immediate danger, because, you see, when you cannot
distinguish at the border, which no one can do, nobody has shown me a
way today to distinguish between that illegal immigrant coming in who
is just coming to do the job no one else wants to do, who wants to be a
restaurant worker or whatever, noone can distinguish just looking at
these people, of course, what they are coming for. You can't say,
``that one looks like he is just looking for a job, but that one over
there, they look like they might be coming to do something bad.''
You cannot tell. You have to secure the borders and have everybody
coming into this country legally through a process that allows us to
identify them, find out what they are coming in for, how long they are
going to be here and for what purpose, and find out when they leave.
You need internal enforcement in the United States of our immigration
laws to make this thing work.
So it is not just the border where we need to have the military, but
we have to have the INS using its resources inside the country to
identify people who are here illegally and remove them.
I absolutely do not want us, I am not asking for, we never have
proposed, using the military for interior enforcement of law. There is
a law against that. It is sometimes referred to as the Posse Comitatus
Act of 1878. That is not what I am talking about.
I am talking about using the military to augment our homeland defense
forces on our borders, at our ports of entry, at our coasts, until that
Homeland Defense Agency is ready to take on that job itself.
We can do it. We do not have to have people strung out arm-in-arm
across
[[Page H2305]]
5,000 miles of border. That is not what we are talking about. It would
take relatively few people but people who are trained and have the
technology. That is what the military offers us, training and
technology, which can be employed for that purpose.
Yes, people say to me all the time, we have got this war going on in
Iraq, and are you saying you would use troops on the border? I say,
yes. Yes, I would use troops on the border. Because, of course, we only
make life more dangerous for everybody. There is not a soul who does
not think life is more dangerous for the average American as a result
of us going to war in Iraq, at least at the outset of this thing.
I pray to God that our efforts in Iraq will be successful. I hope
they are successful immediately. I do not want to see another person
hurt or injured. I certainly do not want to see an American soldier in
that situation. I want them home as quickly as possible. They are
fighting a just war. We have to win it. I hope we win it soon. Then I
do believe the world will be safer.
But I know this: That the threat of terrorism will increase as a
result of our efforts in Iraq. Even our own government admits that. We
went to a heightened state of the alert status immediately upon going
to war. Everybody knows that is the case. Everybody knows it is more
dangerous right now.
So, yes, I would say use troops on our border, because in fact that
is our first line of defense. That is exactly where we should be
employing some of our military assets.
We do not need many. We do not need hundreds of thousands of troops.
I was on the border, the northern border, observing an operation that
used 100 Marines to control 100 miles. That was the test, 100 Marines,
100 miles. And do you know what? When you combine their efforts with
the Border Patrol and the Forest Service personnel on that border, it
worked.
I saw them interdict people coming across that border on ATVs, all
terrain vehicles, and people flying small planes across the border.
Believe me, they would have gone unnoticed. It is the most rugged
terrain you have seen up on the northern border, in this case just a
few miles north of Bonners Ferry, Idaho.
We can do it. Let us extrapolate here tonight and say 100 Marines,
100 miles. You have 5,000 miles, you employ 5,000 troops. It would be
more difficult than that, I recognize, but it would not be that much
more difficult, and it would not take that many more troops.
If nothing else, we can train them there. Our troops have to be
trained somewhere. The Marines told me that that was the best training
experience they have ever had. I was told that by the Marine commander
of the unit that that was the best training they had ever had, because
it was real time, they were trying to stop real bad guys coming across
that border, and it was the most rugged terrain you could possibly
imagine. So, if nothing else, we should be training on the border.
It could serve two purposes: The training of our troops and also the
interdiction of people coming across this border illegally.
{time} 2015
Let us go to some of the specific instances that we have witnessed
here in the recent past. Here is an interesting one. Wadih El Hage, he
was arrested in the Saguaro National Park for possession of an
automatic weapon, an AK-47 rifle. He was using this AK-47 for target
practice. On September 15, 1998, Wadih testified before a Federal grand
jury which was investigating the bombings of the American embassies in
Nairobi, Dar es Salaam. Several days later, he was charged with
perjury. On October 7, he was indicted in connection with the embassy
bombings. He was subsequently convicted for both offenses and is now
serving a life sentence.
Now, what happened? How they got him is that he was observed and
arrested after he had just come across the border; he was observed in
the national park by a park ranger. He was testifying, Wadih was
testifying at this trial in September and he was saying that he has
never fired a weapon, he has no arms, he does not know why he was being
harassed. A Border Patrol agent came across this guy's picture and he
said, you know what? I remember that guy. I remember arresting him not
too long ago in the Saguaro National Park. And you know what? He was
practicing with an AK-47. So that testimony ended up, the testimony and
evidence provided by the Border Patrol ended up with this conviction
for perjury in September; and later they were able to connect this
gentleman to the embassy bombings.
Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a 23-year-old Palestinian, 1996 arrested
twice within 6 days for crossing over the Canadian border illegally.
Both times turned over to the INS who released him back across the
border and, of course, the revolving door, he came right back down. In
1997 he was arrested a third time coming across the border illegally,
and later arrested in New York in a plot to blow up the New York
subways.
This guy, talk about a lucky catch, my colleagues may remember
something about him. Ahmed Rassem, December 1999, Ahmed Rassem was
arrested with 1,000 pounds of explosives and four timers, the timers
are right here in the picture at the bottom. He was arrested at the
Olympic National Park, Washington. He chose Port Angeles because of the
lack of technology and the manpower there. He was convicted of
participating in a plot to blow up Los Angeles Airport on New Year's
Eve, 1999. Now, these are three we got.
Remember what I said earlier that for everybody we actually find,
actually interdict at the border, for every one of them, at least five
people get across. Now, let me tell my colleagues, those are folks who
get across and they are the most unsophisticated and perhaps unskilled
in the manners and mechanisms that could be employed to come across the
border. These are folks, many of them, that are just simply looking for
the jobs that are available. They get by on a ratio of 5 to 1. Can we
imagine how much more, what the ratio is, I should say, for people who
are a little more sophisticated in the smuggling business? How many
more Ahmed Rassems got through?
We know that the Center for Immigration Studies has indicated that we
have 115,000 illegal immigrants from various Middle Eastern nations who
are currently residing in the United States, as many as 115,000 from
Middle Eastern nations. Day after day after day we are confronted by
news stories of very scary folks coming across the border, sometimes
doing very scary things.
This is an interesting article. This was in the Tucson paper not too
long ago. An Arizona couple has discovered a diary written in Arabic in
a backpack apparently dropped on their property by an illegal alien
entering the United States, reports the Sierra Vista Herald Review.
According to the report, Walter Kolbe, he owns a ranch down there, was
chasing some wild animals away from his home last week when he stumbled
upon the backpack. Not an unusual occurrence on his property, since it
is a path used routinely by illegal aliens coming from Mexico. He
brought it home, but did not immediately open the backpack. After going
away for a weekend, Kolbe's wife, May, looked into the backpack and
discovered the diary. He says, I found it about a hundred yards from
the house near a barbed wire fence. I was just going to throw it in the
trash. According to Mr. Kolbe and, by the way, his brother serves in
the House of Representatives here from Arizona, most of the writing was
in Arabic, though there was some Spanish writing as well.
When I was down on that border in that same area, I came across a lot
of material in what are called pickup sites. What these are are places
where a large number of people will gather after walking into the
United States illegally, they will gather, and it is near a road
always, sometimes a dirt road, sometimes a paved road, and they will
await transportation northward. It is all arranged, it is taken care
of, because now this has turned into a very big business. And the
people who used to be selective and only were involved with
the importation of drugs are now importing people because it has become
very lucrative. And in these pickup sites, as I say, there will be
thousands of people gathered and there is trash strewn everywhere, lots
and lots of backpacks, as is evidenced here, and lots of materials
laying all over the ground.
Not too long ago in this same area we found a prayer rug, a rug that
is used
[[Page H2306]]
by Muslims to conduct prayer ceremonies. It was found, by the way, at
one of these pickup sites. There are all kinds of instances where we
have found Arabic materials, Arabic passports, Arabic papers,
accoutrements in these pickup sites.
Now, there is a road not too far from Douglas, Arizona, that is
referred to by the locals in the area as the Arab Road. And when you
ask them, what do you mean by that, they say, well, because the Arabs
are willing to pay so much more to come into the United States, up to
$30,000 per person, that they are sometimes transported separately.
They will not come in through the same pipeline as the Mexican
nationals. Some of these, the high-paying folks, they will be brought
across a different area, brought in a little nicer, like going first
class. They pay a little more so that they can come in with a little
less possibility of heat exhaustion or dropping dead in the desert from
exposure because they will pay, as I say, a lot more money. But they
are coming into the United States with purposes that we know are the
most diabolical, to do something here that threatens our safety. They
are coming across the border because it is the easiest way to get into
the United States if you want to do something bad, because our borders
are undefended. They are unprotected. It is incredible. Certainly it is
something to go down in future history books. I just hope that those
chapters will not be titled something like ``The Last Days of the
American Experience.''
I see I am joined tonight on the floor by a friend, a member of our
caucus who has been a champion, is the best way I can describe it, ever
since I came to the Congress of the United States and have been pushing
this issue. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goode) preceded me here
and certainly was laboring in this vineyard before I ever got here and
continues to offer his observations, which I invite him to share with
us this evening.
Mr. GOODE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Colorado
for his focus on this issue, for bringing it to the attention of this
Congress, for bringing it to the attention of America. He has made many
trips and seen firsthand the huge problem that exists on our border,
the huge danger that it poses for all of us in the United States. He
has been the head of the Immigration Reform Caucus; and he is
awakening, I believe, in many of us the need to take action and to do
more than we have done.
We have one piece of legislation before this Congress, H.R. 277, in
addition to a number of other measures, aimed at stopping or curtailing
immigration. But H.R. 277 would authorize the utilization of U.S.
forces on our borders. We have troops on the borders now, but they are
not United States troops. Troops from Mexico frequently come to the
border and have various activity and occurrences there, but they are
not our troops.
The focus of the 107th Congress in large part was on homeland
security. A big focus of this, the 108th Congress, is homeland
security. On the Committee on Appropriations we have a subcommittee
devoted to appropriations matters related to homeland security. They
are going to be in charge of billions of dollars. Working with the
executive branch and the other body, they will craft a budget for that
Department; and I can tell my colleagues when it is voted on here on
the floor, it will contain, as I said, billions upon billions of
dollars.
But spending a huge sum of money in and of itself will not guarantee
us homeland security. There may not be anything that can guarantee us
100 percent safety in the United States of America, but I will tell my
colleagues one thing that can significantly enhance our homeland
security, and that is having a troop presence on our southern border
and on our northern border.
We had a discussion in the 107th Congress on an amendment for troops
on the border on the defense authorization measure. It passed the
House. We debated that issue. A fear was voiced that the troops might
shoot someone; and, in fact, years ago, that occurred, and that has
some persons upset. But if we want a lifesaver, I would submit having
troops on the border will be a lifesaver. Hundreds die every year
trying to cross the border. Some suffocate, a few drown, others are
lost, and some just die in the hot desert sun. Troops on the border
would save those lives. We need a lifesaving position, and that is
having troops on our borders.
{time} 2030
In World War II, prior to World War II, there was a book that
received considerable attention after World War II. That was entitled
``Why England Slept.'' America is asleep today by not positioning and
having troops on our borders. They are too porous.
I was handed some information that appeared in Newsweek where the
mastermind of the September 11 occurrence discussed bringing operatives
through the Mexican borders. He indicated that officials were concerned
that the United States remains dangerously unprepared for terrorist
attacks on several fronts. The easiest way for them to come in would be
across our porous northern and southern borders.
If we are to get a handle on illegal immigration and if we are to
prevent a situation which has millions of illegals in this country, we
must start with troops on the border, and by adopting other measures of
the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus sponsored by the gentleman
from Colorado and others.
We also need to discourage those from coming to this country
illegally. Under the laws of a number of States, illegals have the
opportunity by one way or another of getting a driver's license. My
home State of Virginia this year adopted legislation to prohibit those
in the country illegally from having a Virginia operator's license.
They also adopted legislation, and I was proud of this because this
is a discouragement to illegals from entering the country, they adopted
legislation to say that they could not get an in-state tuition rate at
our community college system if they were here illegally. I would
suggest that they should not even be at the community college system.
However, the debate was over whether we should give someone in this
country who either came across the border through no checks or
overstayed their visas and were undocumented an in-state tuition rate.
What they were saying with a policy like that is if you were from the
State of Maryland and you wanted to go to Northern Virginia Community
College, you had to pay one rate; but if you were here illegally and
you happened to be in the State of Virginia, you got a lower rate. That
is the type of encouragement for illegal immigration we need to do away
with in this country.
Another thing we cannot do again that we did in the past was adopt
another amnesty. Millions that come across the border say, you know
what, if I can make it across and not drown, if I can make it across
and not die in the hot desert sun, and stay in America a few years and
have an employer, I can get amnesty.
We need to send the message loud and clear, if you are here
illegally, you are not going to get amnesty, not now and not in the
future. If we adopt that forthright position, we will not have between
9 million and 11 million persons in this country illegally.
I will never forget a few months ago standing on the steps of the
Cannon Office Building. There was a gentleman there. He had a son that
was killed on September 11 at the World Trade Center. He said, if I had
to pick out a fact that I think contributed a great deal to what
happened to my son, it was the massive illegal immigration in the
United States. He said, those 19 terrorists that were here on September
11, all illegal, they were swimming in a sea of illegal immigration.
How could the officials ferret out 19 out of the millions and millions
that are here that are not supposed to be in the United States of
America?
He was right on the money. We need to stop illegal immigration, and
we can do that by adopting some of the legislation sponsored by the
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) and others in the Congressional
Immigration Reform Caucus, and we need to put troops on the border
tonight.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. He brings up an
incident I recall well, and I am glad he did bring it to our attention.
It was a very emotional time when the father of some young man that was
lost in the
[[Page H2307]]
World Trade Center did in fact say exactly that, that those people were
allowed to be in the United States because they were able to swim in
this sea of illegal immigration and they were undetectable.
This is why when people talk to us about immigration, and we often
have people respond when we start talking about the national security
issues. I have been in Mexico and have had Members of the Mexican
Government say, you know, none of those people were Mexican that
committed those crimes. Of course not. It is the fact that we are only
as strong as our weakest link. If we cannot control our borders because
we are trying to let illegal immigrants come across from Mexico who are
not trying to do anything really bad to us, we cannot possibly hope to
protect ourselves from those who are trying to do something bad. That
is the point here. That is why we are talking about this as a national
security issue.
My friend, the gentleman from Virginia, mentioned this Newsweek
article. He has learned that 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed told
interrogators that he discussed bringing operatives through the Mexican
border. They worry about these people coming across, suicide bombings
at soft targets like malls, public transportation.
Another worry, of course, is that a terrorist could acquire shoulder-
fired missiles and shoot them at passenger planes. Of course, any
number of horrendous things could happen. Our minds could run wild on
all the things that could happen in this country because we are an open
and free society. We do not want to change that.
The best way to avoid having an overreaction in the United States and
trying to pass laws that we worry about in terms of what we will do to
civil liberties, as Members know, we get lots of mail on the PATRIOT
Act, and whatever kind of legislation that may be being formulated here
as an addition to the PATRIOT Act. There are concerns, and concerns I
share, about overreaching government activity. But one way to avoid
that, Mr. Speaker, is to protect our borders. It is to stop, to the
extent humanly possible, them from getting here to begin with.
Maybe we will not be able to make it absolutely secure. No, in fact,
I know we cannot. Even if we do all the things I and the gentleman from
Virginia (Mr. Goode) and other Members of the Congressional Immigration
Reform Caucus are suggesting, we cannot make it perfect; but it is our
best effort we are supposed to exert here in this Congress. That is the
best we can do.
If we have something happen even after we have done it all, we can at
least say we have tried everything. That is our responsibility. We
cannot continue to ignore the existence of this threat to our very
existence.
Other recent news, the Nation's biggest commercial nuclear power
facility faces a possible terrorist threat. It just came out. Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham said Thursday, he told the Senate Committee
on Armed Services that terrorists may have targeted the Palo Verde
Nuclear Plant in Arizona. He said he would not go into details about
intelligence reports concerning the plans that may include an attack on
the plant.
The Washington Times reported Thursday that terrorists have targeted
the Arizona plant, and security officials are looking for Iraqi
government sleeper cells that might carry out the attack. The threat to
the facility came from sensitive information indicating the plant was
targeted by Middle Eastern terrorists who were not further identified.
Earlier this week on our Florida coast, a Cuban Coast Guard vessel
slipped in, it was a military vessel, got into Key West without ever
being detected. These things go on and on.
In Miami, U.S. authorities made a fresh and urgent call for public
help yesterday to find a Saudi-born man who could pose what they termed
a very, very serious threat as part of an al Qaeda plot against the
United States. Stepping up their search with an appeal to the U.S.
Muslim community for information, the FBI said Adnan El Shukrijumah was
a friend of a man now serving prison time for plotting to blow up a
Florida power plant. The agency said that this individual is not
charged with a crime but is being sought for questioning, involved with
al Qaeda activities.
Just a couple of days ago as Baghdad was being bombed, it was
reported on Fox News and Sky News as well as Worldnet Daily that there
was a search going on for six Iraqis in either northern Mexico or the
U.S. Southwest. They were said to be carrying toxic materials requiring
temperature control. That means they are either biological or
radiological. Either way, they are ominous and dangerous. According to
tips by undercover investigators, the search had been going on for 2 to
3 days on the Mexican side, and now it is starting on the United States
side.
We could go on through stories like this all night long. Long after I
have run out of time to deliver those stories they could be available,
because they are there. When we talk about immigration and immigration
reform, we have to understand the importance of this concept.
It is not just an issue of jobs; it is not just an issue of
acculturation, of integration into the society, of balkanization of
America. All of those things are disconcerting. It is not just an issue
of American citizens who are out of work and being displaced by people
coming here from foreign countries. All those things are serious
issues.
It is not just the issue of the amount of drugs coming across both
borders and into our ports every single day. We talk about harmful
substances and dangerous substances. Certainly the tons and tons and
tons of drugs that are being brought in by illegal smugglers, by
illegal aliens carrying things on their shoulders and backpacks, in
those backpacks it could be 60 pounds of marijuana, sarin gas; it could
be all kinds of very, very ugly things.
All of those things are serious consequences, serious threats, I
should say, serious issues. But we decided to start this series of
discussions tonight with this one specific one of the danger to the
country posed by porous borders because of the threat of terrorism that
is so real.
I hope and pray that we never have to stand on this floor and say, I
told you so, I told you, unless we secure those borders, something
horrible is going to happen. Somebody is going to waltz across them and
do something very, very bad. Do Members know what is going to happen?
Not only are we going to be rushing to the borders to try and do
something, but we are going to be overreacting, probably, internally.
There are going to be threats to civil liberties that will develop as a
result of some incident that occurs in this country.
I hate to think about this, and I hope and pray I am absolutely wrong
in this prediction, but it is certainly not out of the question to
suggest that this could happen. We are told by Homeland Security
Director Ridge and everybody else in positions of authority to expect
such a thing, to expect an event. Well, at least if this event occurs,
let us at least be able to turn to our constituents and say, we have
tried everything we can do. We have committed to you, when we have
asked you for a vote and you have asked us to adhere to the
Constitution and uphold that Constitution, we have tried to do that.
The part of the Constitution that specifically refers to the protection
of life and property, we have tried to do it. That is what I want to be
able to say. We cannot ensure perfect security and safety, but we can
try our best. That is the least we can do is the best that we can do,
and we are not anywhere near it, I am sorry to say.
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