[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 55 (Tuesday, May 9, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H2325-H2330]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
half the time remaining before midnight.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always, I very much appreciate the 
privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker, and in so doing addressing this 
great United States of America House of Representatives.
  I am a bit breathless because I hustled over here to arrive at the 
appointed time; and I thank my colleagues, hopefully, they filibustered 
a few minutes on my behalf as good friends likely would.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to you about a few issues about 
border control especially on the southern border and primarily on the 
southern border. I have long spoken about the policy that I think we 
need to have with regard to the immigration policy across the Nation, 
about domestic enforcement and shutting off the jobs magnet, and also 
about the need to stop the bleeding at our southern border.
  And so I had gone down to the border about a year ago and spent a 
long weekend down there, at least 3 days on the ground and in the air, 
as a guest of the Border Patrol and some of the other agencies that 
operate the security along the border. And I was given a very good tour 
and a few rides in helicopters at night and also in the daytime, 
shining the night sun down along our border to identify where there 
might be illegals that have come across or future illegals preparing to 
come across. And I stopped and visited some of the stations and their 
equipment and talked to the men. I was impressed with the quality of 
the team people that they had assembled, the equipment they had 
assembled, and the tactics they had. Yet in that full long weekend, I 
did not actually see activity which would indicate to a reasonable 
person that there was not activity to be seen.
  In spite all of those hours in the air and the hours on the ground 
and the night vision equipment, I did not again see any illegal 
activities, although I got many reports of the success of the 
interdiction of our border patrol and our other agencies.
  Well, as I listen to the debate here in the House of Representatives, 
Mr. Speaker, and the testimony that comes before the immigration 
subcommittee which I sit upon, and I sit in those hearings two, three, 
even four times a week and we will have four, sometimes eight witnesses 
giving us credible data and good well-informed information on this 
issue from both sides of the issue, Mr. Speaker, and always the years, 
the cumulative information has built in me after those years of sitting 
on the immigration subcommittee, I began to think that I have a pretty 
decent broad background on the subject. And yet there was a gap, Mr. 
Speaker, there was a gap in that subject because I had not gone down 
and spent time on the border more or less unguided, more or less 
outside the scope of the Border Patrol, but gone ahead and gone down to 
the border and looked under all the stones and met with the people that 
were actually more likely to be more frank with me.
  So that was my mission this past weekend where I spent perhaps as 
much as 4 days on the ground in Arizona. And the goal was to meet with 
the people that are enforcing our laws down there, the ones that are 
out in the night and those people who have seen this bleeding, this 
hemorrhaging at our border firsthand, that can describe to me the scope 
of the bleeding in our southern border.
  Mr. Speaker, I am here to say tonight that it is astonishing. It is 
far worse than I had imagined and my imagination was fairly strong. My 
predictions and the numbers that I put out were fairly aggressive, at 
least viewed by some of my critics. But there is nothing I saw down on 
the border over the weekend, Mr. Speaker, that would cause me to 
believe that I have overstated the numbers of people who are illegally 
crossing our border or the amount of drugs, illegal drugs, that are 
coming across our border, or the amount of violence that is visited 
because of the drug problem both south of the border, north of the 
border, and the violence that goes throughout the drug culture in 
America and the collateral damage to the victims that may not be 
associate with that at all, but happened to be in the wrong place at 
the wrong time and are victims of murder, victims of negligent homicide 
generally in the form of a car accident where the driver who was at 
fault was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
  So what I did, Mr. Speaker, was go down to visit in a region, 
starting out on Friday, in a region south of Tucson, south and a little 
bit east of Tucson. I first met with a special agent who briefed me on 
a lot of information that had been coming by this individual on a 
consistent basis. And then I went to Bisbee, Arizona, where I went on 
down then to the border there to Naco, Arizona, right on the border 
with Mexico. That is a location that has seen a fair amount of violence 
and a lot of concentration of illegal traffic going along the border. 
They finally decided to establish and build a fence, Mr. Speaker.
  I was guided to that location by a retired Border Patrol officer and 
a rancher from that region, both with a passion of patriotism for 
America, both that have a memory of growing up in an America and that 
part of Arizona that was a different kind of country than it is today. 
It was then a place that they could feel safe in their streets and safe 
in their homes and walk the streets and not lock their homes. And today 
that region has been flooded with just thousands and tens of thousands 
and perhaps hundreds of thousands of illegals, many of them carrying 
illegal drugs through that region.
  And cars drive across the border where sometimes there had been an 
existing fence that was built originally to contain livestock, that 
fence has essentially been systematically broken down, and vehicles 
with drugs and illegals in them would drive right through the gaps in 
the fence, sometimes drive through the fence, and take off across the 
desert or cut across over to a highway and get up on the highway. And 
once they were on the highway, for a little ways they were gone, they 
were free, they were in America, not ever to be captured again, not 
ever to be accountable again unless they were just simply victims of 
bad luck.
  They realized the magnitude of this problem at Naco, Arizona, and 
went in and built a fence through there, Mr. Speaker. It is built out 
of interlocking steel that sometimes can be 10 feet high or higher and 
then above that in some cases they have welded a kind of wire mesh that 
goes up another 4 to 6 feet. And when they originally built the fence, 
people said it would not work. It cannot work. People will go over it. 
They will go through. They will go under it, or they will go around it. 
In fact, they do go around it, Mr. Speaker.
  At one point they picked up a cutting torch and cut a hole through it 
and made their own gate in that solid steel fence, and that was a 
pathway by

[[Page H2326]]

which people and drugs traveled into the United States, and some went 
back through that gate. And the patrol went there and welded the gate 
shut, and as they kept some maintenance up on the fence, the other side 
essentially gave up on trying to breech the fence.

                              {time}  2230

  Now, the illegal traffic goes around the end as one reason, rather 
than trying to find a way through a barrier that is a good solid 
barrier that has been very, very effective.
  The Border Patrol officer whom I was there with and the rancher whom 
I was there with said look at this, and they described the problem they 
used to have about the thousands of people pouring across there. They 
said: We do not have that problem anymore. This community is safer than 
it was. It is more secure than it was. There is far less illegal 
traffic going through here. There is far less crime of all kinds, far 
less violence, and far fewer illegal drugs in this community because we 
built a barrier that kept the elements out that were eroding our 
quality of life in Naco, Arizona.
  That was an interesting trip, and they took me out along the border 
where that fence essentially stops and diminishes in some locations. 
There is nothing there, not even a way to define where the border is 
between the United States and Mexico, but simply open places where 
illegals can walk across the border and one location just in a dry 
river bed or they would not be seen by night vision. They were 
protected by the shrubbery and vegetation. They could simply walk down 
from Mexico into the United States unimpeded, unobstructed, unobserved 
and become shadow people here in the United States doing whatever they 
do.
  They were strong advocates of the border barrier and one that is 
solidly built and one that can be efficient and is becoming a tool that 
could very much support our law enforcement and let them focus their 
energy on plans that could be more effective than riding herd on a 
broad length of an unprotected border. It is ridiculous to think that 
we could ever hire enough people to sit along the border, especially at 
night, and watch people come across and then catch them rather than put 
in a fence that would not allow them to come across in the first place.
  That was Naco, Arizona, and again, I learned a lot about the culture 
and the level of corruption on the south side of the border. It was an 
interesting conversation.
  From there, I went down then to the reservation and was a guest of a 
number of the Shadow Wolves who are part of the Customs and Border 
Patrol. Actually, today, they are a part of the Border Patrol. They 
have been shifted to that, but it is on the Tohono O'odham Reservation, 
and on the reservation the Native Americans control that land. They 
have support of the Border Patrol, but they have had an organization 
there called the Shadow Wolves. They are Federal employees and their 
responsibility is to guard the border and interdict illegal drugs and 
illegal aliens. They are focusing on illegal drugs. Their peak 
recruitment, the top numbers there, Mr. Speaker; were 22, and when they 
were 22 strong, in fact, that does not sound like a very large group 
given the size of the reservation and given the miles of border that 
they have to protect, and I believe that number is 76 miles of border 
protected and controlled by 22 Shadow Wolves, members of the Tohono 
O'odham tribe on the reservation; but those 22, in the period of a 
year, I have got to dig up the statistics so I will be able to release 
those and publish those, Mr. Speaker, but the information I received, 
that they had interdicted more illegal drugs in a 12-month period of 
time with 22 of their Shadow Wolves than all 2,000 Border Patrol agents 
did in that entire sector for the same period of time.
  That is an extraordinary example of effectiveness and efficiency, Mr. 
Speaker; and it is the kind of thing that we here in this Congress need 
to endorse and support and encourage and fund and authorize and protect 
and encourage and enhance, do all of things that we can do to identify 
the best among us, to encourage them, to grow that culture off beyond 
the bounds of the reservation, take that same culture of efficiency and 
enforcement on to the other reservations, whether Native American 
tribes that control land on our national boundaries with our neighbors, 
and the level of success that has been there has not been rewarded. It 
has not been encouraged. It has not been enhanced by the Border Patrol 
who seems to want to be seeking to undermine their efforts and absorb 
them into the broader Border Patrol, in which case, if they did that, 
the Shadow Wolves would lose their identity.
  These people have an extraordinary amount of character and courage 
and conviction and pride in what they do; but like anyone, if they do 
not see a reward for that, if they do not see some kind of 
encouragement, if they do not understand that here in Congress we are 
supporting them, eventually they will be assimilated into the Border 
Patrol and their level of efficiency will be assimilated into the 
broader overall level of efficiency in the Border Patrol.
  Now, I do not mean to imply that the Border Patrol is not efficient 
or that they may not have the kind of personnel that I would like to 
see. In fact, they have some very extraordinarily, brave, noble, 
hardworking officers, and many of them. The structure has become big 
and it has become difficult to be efficient. So I am not here to 
discourage them. I am here to encourage them, and I often shake their 
hands and thank them for what they do because they are the last line of 
defense along our border to protect us from the incursions of millions 
that take place in this country every single night, Mr. Speaker.
  But what I saw from the Shadow Wolves was not only some of the 
history in their legacy and their efficiency and effectiveness, but I 
went out in the field with them and watched the way that they follow 
the border. When they see that there has been a border crossing there, 
they will pick up that sound, that track if you will, and they will 
follow that track down and hunt down the illegals. Sometimes they are 
carrying backpacks of illegal drugs. Sometimes they are just people 
entering the United States illegally, but they will find that track and 
get on a trot and follow that track and trace them to where they are, 
pick them up and detain them and then process them in a fashion in 
accordance with law.
  Again, their effort has been extraordinary in some of the things that 
they showed and taught me, too much to go in depth here, Mr. Speaker, 
on the floor of the House of Representatives, but quite a lot of 
extraordinary skill that appears to me would be very constructive if it 
could be passed along to other agencies out there, particularly the 
broader Border Patrol.
  But the culture is there as well as more important the skills to 
protect the culture of the Shadow Wolves. It is extraordinary. I was 
impressed with what they do, and I intend to support and encourage and 
enhance them. I will be looking for a way legislatively to demonstrate 
my commitment to their commitment to protect our border and defend us 
against the illegal incursions into the United States and the thousands 
and thousands of pounds of illegal drugs that come across our border 
every single day, many of them still pouring through the Tohono O'odham 
Reservation and in spite of the best efforts of the now-shrunken Shadow 
Wolves, down from 22 to 16 to cover those 76 miles of border fence. So, 
again, I have been extraordinarily impressed, but they have done their 
job.
  From there, I traveled outside the reservation and went over then to 
the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and met with some people 
there, some national parks people and Department of the Interior forest 
rangers. Seventy-five percent of their work, which they signed up to 
do, would be to protect our natural resources, preserve our parks, 
enhance our parks, let Mother Nature be enhanced there so that the 
visiting public could come into these locations, like the Cabeza Prieta 
National Refuge, and be able to appreciate Mother Nature in its purest 
form.

  That is why our forest rangers and our park officers got into the 
business, because they appreciate wildlife. They appreciate our plant 
life. They appreciate how the species of nature have balanced in these 
regions and how they have grown, and they try to enhance that.
  They find that 75 percent of their time, their Border Patrol officers 
even, 75 percent of their time is spent protecting the border, 75 
percent of the

[[Page H2327]]

time keeping illegals and illegal drugs out of the park, not a 
successful effort I might add, and perhaps a futile effort, but an 
effort that needs to be attempted nonetheless.
  With dozens and dozens of abandoned vehicles sitting out across the 
national wildlife refuge, vehicles that have blazed a trail through 
there and hundreds of miles of roads have been carved through that 
national wildlife refuge because that was the most expeditious route 
for smugglers to drive their suburbans and their 4-wheel drive pickups 
and you name your vehicle, there, and there will be somebody else 
behind you, and the next night another and another and another. That 
formerly pristine desert turns into sometimes a 200-foot wide path 
after it has been pounded in the desert with traffic enough times it 
turns into what they call moon dust, just loose dust that lays there in 
ruts in a way that you can get stuck in that dust, 200 feet wide 
perhaps.
  Before, this was a few less than 10 years ago, in fact, starting 
about 1998, was when these border incursions began and when they began 
to create these roads and these trails and tear up our natural 
resources. The people that are dying in an attempt to get across the 
desert have gone from a couple of years ago or 3 years ago 150, 175 a 
year, now across our southern border, as many as 450 a year do not make 
it across the desert when they seek to walk into the United States. 
They die of hypothermia, they die of exposure, they die of dehydration, 
more dehydration than anything else. The desert is not very forgiving, 
and some of them are not very well prepared. They are not very well-
guided, and that human tragedy is exacerbated by the damage to our 
natural resources which I had a, I will say, less than enhanced 
appreciation for.
  Mr. Speaker, I really learned to respect and appreciate the work that 
is done by our Department of the Interior, as well as the value of the 
resources that they are seeking to protect. A case in point I think 
illustrates this better than anything else would be a rare species of a 
bat, a long nose bat, and this is an endangered species. It only lives 
and reproduces in four caves, and those caves are all down in that 
region.
  One of those caves was a cave that was frequented consistently by the 
illegals who would go up into the region, and then their guide and 
their track would take them to this cave where the baby bats were born. 
They began taking a stop off and temporary residence in the cave to the 
point where they scared the bats off and they would not come back in.
  The long nose bat, the lesser long nose bat, left the cave, would not 
come back to reproduce, and so our National Park Service looked at that 
situation, said we have to protect this resource; and if this happens 
in the other three caves, there will be no place for these bats to 
reproduce, who knows if they will become extinct.
  So they put up a wrought iron fence around the opening to this cave, 
cost $75,000, and there is other labor that was not tallied in, put the 
wrought iron fence around the cave, and it was built in way to keep the 
illegals out of the cave. Fortunately, the lesser long nose bats 
returned to the cave, and they are in there now living there and 
reproducing, but think about it for a moment if you would, Mr. Speaker, 
the effect of building a fence just around the entrance of the cave 
that provided a deterrent that allowed the bats to come back and live 
there again and reproduce and fly out, and they are really essential. 
They are essential then to the pollination of certain cactus out there 
in the desert, without which the cactus would not survive. It has a 
whole set of chain reactions.
  I am submitting that we build a fence on the border because it is a 
lot cheaper to do than it is to build a fence around everything that is 
threatened from the illegals and the drug trade that comes from our 
southern border.
  That was the lesson there at the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife 
Refuge, that being a second stop or actually a third stop along the 
way; and then from there I went on over to Organ Pipe National Cactus 
Monument. Organ Pipe is another national monument location, and that is 
the location where the National Park Service officer, his name was 
Chris Eggle, was killed in a shootout with drug lords near the Mexican 
border in the park property.
  I went there with his father, Bob. I visited the location where the 
shooting took place, where he stood, where the shooter laid, where he 
fell, where there is a monument there today that was built and placed 
by his father, Bob, and his mother, Bonnie. Well, they brought stones 
from their farm in Michigan down to place around the monument, and 
there is a cross and a picture and a place to remember where this 
happened, where it happened that Chris was killed by a drug lord or at 
least an employee of a drug lord who had driven across the Mexican 
border where there was no barrier. When he was being under hot pursuit 
by the Mexican police and his vehicle broke down and collapsed and 
stopped across the border into the United States and Chris Eggle and 
his partner were called in on that scene, as they split up and 
converged on the location where the drug smuggler was, Chris was 
ambushed with an AK-47 that had been brought into the United States, 
illegal, of course, on a vehicle that was illegal, with drugs that were 
illegal, across a border that was undefined, let alone defined with a 
barrier.

                              {time}  2245

  Had there been a vehicle barrier there, had there been a fence there, 
Chris Eggle would be alive today. He is not.
  There is a memorial there at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument 
that memorializes him as well. I talked to many of his coworkers that 
were there. His spirit is alive and his spirit is strong today. The 
happy Chris Eggle is the one that is remembered. Although he is not 
with us, his spirit is with us and his sacrifice is something we need 
to remember.
  He is not the only one. He is not the first one. I pray he will be 
the last one, but I saw nothing down there that would indicate to me, 
Mr. Speaker, that he will be the last one.
  That tragedy taught them something at Organ Pipe after the tragedy of 
Chris' death at the hands of the drug runner whom the Mexicans were 
chasing into the United States; and by the way, that drug runner was 
subsequently shot and killed by the Mexican police department. He was 
in the United States and shot from their side of the border. That is 
not an issue with me, but as a matter of full disclosure, I point that 
out, Mr. Speaker. The lesson learned from that was to close the border, 
at least shut off the vehicle traffic.
  So they have built a vehicle barrier along Organ Pipe and it is most 
of the way along the Organ Pipe National Monument. It is perhaps 32 
miles altogether. As I look at that and travel along the side of that 
border, it is built so that steel posts full of concrete set in the 
ground, and then it has got horizontal barriers, about two of those, 
one about eye height and one about halfway up, designed so that 
vehicles can't drive through it, but the desert pronghorn can run 
through it and jackrabbits can run through it and any kind of wildlife 
can go back and forth through there.
  They had trouble with cattle moving in from Mexico, so they stretched 
a couple of barbed wires in there to keep the cattle on the Mexican 
side. Of course those barbed wires were cut because the people who were 
jumping the border thought it was an obstruction to have to climb over 
one barbed wire, so they cut the fence.
  We drove through and picked a place where the illegal traffic was 
going across and they were demonstrating how that tracking takes place 
as they did with the Shadow Wolves on their reservation. What I saw in 
a number of places, it got to where you could pick it out easily, every 
night, traffic coming into the national monument and paths that are 
beaten so smooth, one of the officers said, Well, one day we'll shut 
off this illegal traffic and it will be a nice path for citizens to 
come down here and visit our park, because it is already smoothed out, 
it is kind of graded out by all the foot traffic.
  In fact, in one of those locations, Mr. Speaker, the traffic goes 
across the fence and right by a sign and the sign says, Do not enter 
into the United States.
  This is a dangerous place. The sun is hot. You can die in the desert. 
There

[[Page H2328]]

isn't water for you. There are snakes. There are scorpions. It's 
dangerous. Turn back. Cynically, the path goes right by the sign. The 
sign is in Spanish. If they can read, they can read that. But in a way, 
I think it is cynically they go by that sign just to send us a message.
  Fifty-eight percent of Mexicans believe they have a right to come to 
the United States. Mr. Speaker, they are utterly wrong, but we need to 
convey that message to them so that they can understand that the United 
States needs to be committed to enforcing our borders.
  The incidents that happened down there illustrate what I saw. First, 
the argument, as I asked the officers, retired Border Patrol or current 
officers who were at the point of retiring or quitting and giving up, 
those were the kind of people that would talk to me. They were the 
people that would open up to me.
  One of them was an officer at a station. No one would talk to me 
because the orders were, You don't speak to a Member of Congress. You 
don't talk to anybody from government. Your job is to do your job, but 
not to tell anyone what that job is, what the statistics are in your 
area. So they sent me to an individual there who is near retirement and 
that individual was willing to speak.
  In fact, numbers of those individuals were willing to speak with me, 
some ready to quit, some ready to retire, some retired. They would talk 
to me straight up and open. They didn't care about the consequences for 
that. They care about this country. They care about our border security 
and our border control and they understand that you can't be a nation 
if you don't have a border. You can't call it a border if you don't 
defend your border, Mr. Speaker.
  I hear the testimony here in Congress as the Border Patrol testifies 
before the Immigration Subcommittee, and consistently it is, we stop 25 
to 33-1/3 percent of the illegals that are traveling across our border. 
I have used that number consistently in my remarks across this country 
and I ask that question of the people that are down there in the line, 
on the line, defending our national security, and I would say, What 
percentage do you stop? Where do you stand?
  They would hesitate in their answer, and I would say, 25 to 33 
percent? Do you stop a fourth? Do you stop a third? How many do you 
stop? They would laugh and give me a number. One of them burst out in 
hysterical laughter when I submitted that they could be successful in 
stopping 25 percent of the illegal traffic. He responded back to me, 
No, it's more like 3 percent of the illegal traffic, of the illegals 
coming into the United States do we stop and perhaps 5 percent of the 
illegal drugs. It's not 25 percent. It's not 33 percent. In fact, it's 
not 10 percent.
  But of the informed answers that I got down there, and I asked it at 
every stop, the informed answers that I got, I never got an informed 
answer above 10 percent, of anybody that was involved in actual 
protection of the border and processing people that were coming through 
that border. Ten percent.
  Now, think about it for a moment, 10 percent, Mr. Speaker. Last year, 
we apprehended about 1,188,000 illegal entrants into the United States 
on our southern border, on that 2,000-mile run. 1,188,000. If that 
number is correct on 10 percent, if you move that decimal point one 
over, that is 11,880,000 attempts to cross the border. You can take 
perhaps a couple of million off that if you wanted to be generous and 
take it down to 10 million succeeded. I don't think actually 10 million 
succeeded coming into the United States, but I do think the number is 
far higher than the numbers that we are working with in the media 
today.
  We have used the number here, 11 million illegals in America. We used 
the number for 3 years while 4 million people a year at least were 
coming across the border, maybe a lot more than that. And over 3 years 
the number didn't accumulate, but about 500,000 a year, even less. So 
after 3 years we finally raised the number to 12 million, but no one 
now pays attention to that. We are still back stuck in that 11 million 
mode of illegals in America.
  Mr. Speaker, that number is far higher than 11 million.
  Maybe we are successful in stopping 10 percent. Maybe the individual 
who advised me that 3 percent of illegals and 5 percent of the illegal 
drugs, maybe he was off by a factor of, oh, let's say two. Maybe it is 
6  percent of the illegals and 10 percent of the illegal drugs. However 
you measure this, it is astonishing in its magnitude in the cost to 
this country. In fact, we are headed down a path, it won't be very much 
longer that everyone who wants to come to the United States will be 
here. The message was sent January 6, 2004, when our esteemed commander 
in chief gave a speech, it is called in America, ``the amnesty 
speech.'' It was the one that said, here is the policy that we want to 
have, it is one of a guest worker/temporary worker as the only 
solution.

  If you have too many illegals in America, I suppose the quickest and 
cheapest and the most guaranteed solution one could have, Mr. Speaker, 
is simply legalize them all, give them all amnesty, give them a path to 
citizenship, voila, no problem. We have fixed the problem because we 
have legalized them all by a version of amnesty.
  The American people, Mr. Speaker, reject amnesty in this country. 
They understand that we have to have a rule of law, that citizenship 
must be precious, that you must respect the rule of law. There is more 
to being an American than having somebody stamp automatic citizenship 
on your green card or on your matricular consular card.
  There is more to being an American than that, Mr. Speaker. Being an 
American is rooted in and based upon a common culture, an understanding 
and a common sense of experience and history, of reverence and respect 
for our borders, for the sovereignty of the United States of America, 
for the destiny of this country, for the assimilation that has made us 
so great, that have been able to take immigrants in from all over the 
world, bring them into this great giant melting pot of America, give 
them this opportunity and let them reach out and earn and succeed in 
this opportunity for success.
  The legal immigrants in America have performed extraordinarily well. 
In fact, the vigor that they bring to our society and our economy 
surpasses much of the vigor that we find in the native-born Americans 
that are here.
  All of us in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, support a rational 
immigration policy that is designed to enhance the economic, social and 
cultural well-being of America. But if we have an open borders policy 
and the people that advocate for an open borders policy are really 
advocating for an unlimited amount of immigration, everyone who might 
want to come here to the United States could come here; and if all 6 
billion people on the planet want to arrive here in the same year, that 
is fine with them.
  They don't take a stand that there is such a thing as too much 
immigration, even too much illegal immigration. They will not stand in 
the way of one of them. They will not stand up and say, The best thing 
you can do for your country is to stay in your country, grow its 
economy, be part of the solution, bring reform to the governments of 
places like Mexico and points south, places that are so utterly corrupt 
that the economy is strangled, places that are so corrupt that there 
has to be protection paid at every stop along the way, that you can't 
get a birth certification when you are born in a country unless you 
happen to be born into a family that has the connections and maybe is 
willing to pay the kind of funds to pay off the Madrina network that is 
there so that you can get your birth certificate and somebody identify 
who you are and be able to move around in this society or that society.
  The level of corruption is astonishing. It runs deep. I would add to 
this that in spite of all the statistics that I could tell you, in 
fact, I will go to some of those statistics in a moment, Mr. Speaker, 
but first I would like to recount a few incidents that really bring 
home the circumstances and reality.
  As I was there on the Tohono O'Odham reservation with the Shadow 
Wolves, there was a drug smuggler who was pulled over and stopped. We 
were out in the desert tracking some illegals and getting a feel for 
how that worked and excellently being guided. While this was on, there 
was a call to an emergency and a number of the Shadow Wolves mobilized 
and they called in a Black Hawk helicopter that was there to aerially 
observe a vehicle that

[[Page H2329]]

was escaping from the ground people. They followed the vehicle and got 
it trapped up into a dead-end road and the driver took off and ran and 
they followed him and finally apprehended him.
  They brought him and the pickup, the small truck as I would say to 
some of my other friends in America, Mr. Speaker, into the compound 
there where the Shadow Wolves headquarters is and looked the vehicle 
over. It looked like it had been reworked, that they had taken it 
through a body shop and created a false floor underneath the bed of 
that pickup. The bed itself had a plastic liner in it so you couldn't 
see the bodywork that had been done. We looked that over and they 
pointed out to me how that work was done. It was done in a chop-shop in 
Mexico.
  Once they got the clearance to go ahead and search the truck, they 
went in with the jaws of life and peeled the bed of that vehicle up and 
apart. In there we carried out 18 large bales of marijuana, about 10 
pounds or more per bale, at least 180 pounds of marijuana lying 
underneath that 6- to 8-inch false floor of that vehicle. The alleged 
perpetrator, and I did lay eyes on him and evaluated him, I guess, for 
my own perspective, he had a 13 tattooed on his arm, many other tattoos 
all over his chest and arms. It was clear to the people there that he 
was MS-13, Mara Salxatrucha 13, the most dangerous gang that we have 
ever seen in this continent.
  That dangerous gang, of course, is smuggling drugs up into the United 
States. They had collared one of their members, one of their 
perpetrators who was then in that holding cell.
  I was there to help unload the drugs from the pickup, there to 
observe this entire process. There recorded and there to burn it into 
my memory, Mr. Speaker, that we think of a large quantity of drugs 
where I come from, it might be, oh, perhaps a few pounds. Occasionally 
we get larger loads coming up through Iowa, of course. But when 
somebody says a lot of illegal drugs, we are thinking of a quantity 
substantially smaller than 180 pounds. They think of 180 pounds or 200 
pounds of illegal marijuana as a decoy, a decoy that might be designed 
to draw the law enforcement down another path so that when the path 
clears, when all the law enforcement pounces on the decoy, then the 
larger loads can come through, the 1,000 pounds, the 2,600-pound loads, 
the full semi loads can start up the road.
  It is a fact that on those drug routes, those highways that flow from 
the southern part of Arizona up into the rest of the United States, on 
those small mountains that are there, there are lookouts on every 
strategic point.

                              {time}  2300

  Those lookouts are manned by two people, and they are supplied 
regularly and they stay on that mountain for 2-week stretches at a 
time. They are well armed. They have good equipment. They have night 
vision goggles. Infrared equipment. For daylight they have top-notch 
optical equipment, and they have automatic weapons of all kinds, and 
they have good food and good support, and they sit up there. And they 
have good communications so that they can radio from mountaintop to 
mountaintop and be able to tell each other where our drug enforcement 
people, where our Border Patrol are, where the ICE people are, where 
the special agents are, where the Park Service people are, so that when 
the coast is clear, they can run their large load of drugs up through 
the corridors.
  Now, this is an astonishing thing to be able to see that military 
positions in the United States are occupied by the drug lords and their 
troops, and that they are well equipped and well armed and well 
maintained and well supplied, and they are manned 24/7 by two people, 
and we are sitting down here on the floor of this Congress, Mr. 
Speaker, thinking we can get a handle on this some other way. But the 
numbers coming across the border, Mr. Speaker, are astonishing and the 
positions that are taken on those mountaintops where the lookouts are 
are shocking that we would tolerate that in this country, know they are 
there but not go up and take them out.
  The volume of drugs, again, is something beyond my imagination before 
going down there. I had never seen such a pile of illegal drugs. Our 
Federal agencies report that 90 percent of the illegal drugs in the 
United States come across the Mexican border, and the value of those 
drugs is in the area of $60 billion a year. And we sit here in the 
United States of America, we tolerate such a thing, such a thing that 
we would let foreign interests, foreign economic interests, illegal 
interests violate our laws and enrich themselves with the wealth of a 
Nation.
  And the drug addiction that is here in America, of course, feeds it, 
Mr. Speaker; and that is another subject for another time. That is 
something that we need to address.
  That is one incident, the interdiction of about 180 pounds of 
marijuana by the Shadow Wolves during a later afternoon down on the 
Tohono O'odham Reservation.
  But the following evening, as I was looking around, I went down to a 
place called Sasabe, and that again is on the border with Mexico. I 
visited a port of entry there that is manned by the Border Patrol. They 
didn't expect that I was coming. I didn't call in advance. I just drove 
down there and got out of the vehicle and began to talk to them. Good 
people. They are doing their job there, and they are doing it well as 
far as I can see.
  As I began to have a conversation with them, there was an emergency 
call. There had been a drug deal that had gone bad on the other side of 
the border in the Mexican community just on the south side of that port 
of entry.
  Usually, it is a shooting, Mr. Speaker, but this was a knifing. And 
the subject who was knifed had a large wound in his abdomen about 3\1/
2\ inches wide, entered in below the ribs on the right side and up 
through and it did end up lacerating his liver. It didn't get his lung 
as far as I know.
  But the word came that the ambulance was going to cross from Mexico 
into the United States. And they prepared for that. They called in a 
Medivac from the hospital in Tucson. And the Medivac, by the time it 
arrived, there had been two U.S. ambulances that had arrived. The 
Mexican ambulance didn't have any oxygen, didn't have bandages, had 
only surgical gloves on it was a paramedic that was with me lent 
himself right to the task and began to stabilize the patient. When the 
oxygen came, they put oxygen on the patient and held him stable until 
they could load him onto the helicopter and airlift him out to the 
Tucson hospital, all at the cost of the American taxpayer, Mr. Speaker. 
And the cost of this I will get compiled over time.

  The ambulance that came across from Mexico simply parked on the 
United States side. Two ambulances came in, one from near Tucson, one 
from 24 miles away. One brought oxygen. The other was there for 
support. And all lent a hand to get him loaded on the helicopter and 
flew him up to University Hospital in Tucson where they do a great job, 
and they have the only trauma center in all of southern Arizona.
  It was a real eye opener for me to see this individual who had been 
knifed in this fight, covered with tattoos and substantially pierced 
and inebriated with alcohol and cocaine, at his own admission, as part 
of the contributor, I think, to the violence on the other side.
  And I am advised that that kind of incident wasn't just a fluke. And 
I kidded the Border Patrol officer, you staged this for me. Of course 
he didn't. He didn't know I was going to be there. But it happens about 
four times a quarter in that location alone, roughly 16 times a year. 
More shootings than stabbings, when we evacuate people out from Mexico 
into United States hospitals.
  And so I followed up yesterday, Mr. Speaker, and visited the hospital 
and visited the patient. And he had been stabilized and his life had 
been saved. Without that extraordinary effort, it is likely he would 
not have survived the next few hours. But his life appears now that it 
has been saved, and I am grateful for that.
  But I also met with the hospital administrators and they are eating 
millions of dollars of costs in funding the people who are generally 
illegals in the United States. They don't separate that cost from those 
that are evacuated from an injury or a wound that takes place on the 
Mexican side of the border.

[[Page H2330]]

  But the American taxpayers fund this. The American ratepayers fund 
this. And the hospital swallows a fair amount of it. And there have 
been occasions where residents and American citizens of Tucson aren't 
able to be treated because all the beds are full, full of people who 
are illegally in the United States. And so that health care for the 
Tucson residents, the Americans occasionally will go to Phoenix, and 
then the family members that live in the city have to drive to Phoenix 
to visit their family. And just the travel time puts their lives at 
risk as well.
  That's two incidents, Mr. Speaker. And I did follow up on those, and 
I will follow up on the information that comes from it.
  I would add the third incident was I went down to the border last 
night, down to the San Miguel Gate on the reservation, sat in the dark 
for 3 hours and listened. And it wasn't difficult to hear the vehicles 
bring the illegals down near the border, drop them off and hear them 
talking, hear them hush up and then single file, go through the desert 
brush, cross the border into the United States and be off to points 
unknown.
  I used to believe that it was the illegal traffic into the United 
States that was the biggest problem, and that illegal drugs was a 
problem that was part of that. And I am informed that when we put the 
barriers in there, the vehicle barriers, that since they can't drive 
across the border with illegal drugs any longer, Mr. Speaker, in some 
of the locations there are many places where they can, they simply put 
50 pounds of marijuana in a backpack, on one young male Mexican or 
Central American, generally Mexicans, and each one takes a backpack of 
50 pounds each. Maybe 10 of them at a time, maybe 25 at a time. They 
have caught as many as a hundred at a time, walking each with 50 
pounds. And they can walk through 10 or 15 or more miles of desert on 
the Mexico side, 25 or more miles of desert on the U.S. side, and 
arrive up at a transportation predetermined location, and then drop off 
their illegal drugs there. And many of them turn around and walk back 
to Mexico where they pick up another load.
  So the illegal crossings, many of those illegal crossings are people 
coming into the United States with illegal drugs, turning back around 
and walking back into Mexico to get another load of illegal drugs. 
Sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't be better off in this country if they 
would simply stay here and get a job, illegal or not, Mr. Speaker. And 
I don't advocate that, certainly.
  So as I listened and was there while illegals were creeping across 
our border in the dead of the night, not even 24 hours ago, Mr. 
Speaker, and it is another dimension entirely, to see the drugs, the 
interdiction of the drugs, the violence on the border, the knifing, the 
blood, the lack of health care that is there, the incursions on our 
border, the volume that is backpacked up into the United States, the 
volume that is trucked into the United States, and to understand that 
if we can seal this border and seal it with confidence, we could shut 
off 90 percent of the illegal drugs that get by in the United States, 
at least until they find another route to go around.
  But we can build an effective barrier. And as I submitted that to the 
people down there working on the border, consistently, they realize 
that if we build a good solid barrier, one that couldn't be cut 
through, one that couldn't be driven through, one that was solid and 
one that would make it easy for them to drive the trail and enforce it, 
that it could be the most effective tool that we could have.
  It costs us $6 billion a year, Mr. Speaker, to incarcerate the 
illegals here in the United States. Twenty-eight percent of our prison 
population are criminal aliens.
  That is our city, our county, our State and our Federal 
penitentiaries, 28 percent criminal aliens, $6 billion a year. We can 
build one tremendous barrier with $6 billion and a one-time 
expenditure.
  Of course, we wouldn't get it all built in 1 year, so we could spread 
it out over 3 or 4 years, and we could concentrate on the areas that 
needed it the most. We must do that, stop the bleeding, stop the 
bleeding first. Shut off the leaky pipe, and then we can begin to have 
a legitimate debate in this country on what to do about the mess it has 
left.
  But I submit that we shut off the jobs magnet, and we end birthright 
citizenship.
  Another interesting little anecdote down in that same hospital was a 
Mexican national who was pregnant with multiple births. They took care 
of her prenatal care out of the hospital in Tucson, and they also set 
up the provider in Mexico so that they could have the equipment to 
arrange for and give her good care for multiple births.
  Instead, she waited until she went into labor, waited close to the 
border, came into the United States, went into the hospital in Tucson 
and delivered five children there to the tune of six figures times X. 
Those children all have birthright citizenship. They all have now the 
right and the ability to bring in by chain migration their extended 
family members. Who knows what that costs, Mr. Speaker?
  Our compassion knows no bounds, I understand; neither do the borders 
of the United States of the America, apparently. The United States 
Senate needs to pass the legislation 4437 that we passed in this House, 
send it to the President for his signature, establish enforcement, Mr. 
Speaker, and then we can have a legitimate discussion on whether or not 
we might want to have guest workers in this country.

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