[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 88 (Monday, July 10, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H4928-H4930]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1445
DIRECTING SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY TO TRANSFER FUNCTIONS OF UNIT
OPERATING ON THE TOHONO O'ODHAM INDIAN RESERVATION
Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the
bill (H.R. 5589) to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to
transfer to United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement all
functions of the Customs Patrol Officers unit operating on the Tohono
O'odham Indian reservation.
The Clerk read as follows:
H.R. 5589
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHADOW WOLVES TRANSFER.
(a) Transfer of Existing Unit.--Not later that 90 days
after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of
Homeland Security shall transfer to United States Immigration
and Customs Enforcement all functions (including the
personnel, assets, and liabilities attributable to such
functions) of the Customs Patrol Officers unit operating on
the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation (commonly known as the
``Shadow Wolves'' unit).
(b) Establishment of New Units.--The Secretary is
authorized to establish within United States Immigration and
Customs Enforcement additional units of Customs Patrol
Officers in accordance with this section, as appropriate.
(c) Duties.--The Customs Patrol Officer unit transferred
pursuant to subsection (a), and additional units established
pursuant to subsection (b), shall operate on Indian lands by
preventing the entry of terrorists, other unlawful aliens,
instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband
into the United States.
(d) Basic Pay for Journeyman Officers.--A Customs Patrol
Officer in a unit described in this section shall receive
equivalent pay as a special agent with similar competencies
within United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement
pursuant to the Department of Homeland Security's Human
Resources Management System established under section 841 of
the Homeland Security Act (6 U.S.C. 411).
(e) Supervisors.--Each unit described in this section shall
be supervised by a Chief Customs Patrol Officer, who shall
have the same rank as a resident agent-in-charge of the
Office of Investigations within United States Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Souder) and the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson)
each will control 20 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Indiana.
Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, let me first explain a little bit about
who the Shadow Wolves are.
They are a specialized, all-Native American unit of the legacy U.S.
Customs Service that were created by an act of Congress in 1972 to
patrol the U.S.-Mexican land border within the Tohono O'odham Indian
Nation in southern Arizona.
If you kind of visualize the southwest border, California, Arizona,
New Mexico and Texas, and then think of Phoenix and Tucson coming
straight down, Nogales, and then go towards California going west, that
area would be the Tohono O'odham Reservation. It is an artificially
defined border with Mexico there, because, in fact, the Tohono O'odham
are on both sides of that, and Congressman Hayworth here in Congress
has a bill to try to address how they can move inside their
reservation, particularly as we tighten our border.
But it is a different challenge because, quite frankly, they were
there before Mexico and the United States were there. So it is a
different type of a challenge on the southwest border as to how we are
going to provide security from terrorism, security from narcotics, from
other types of items moving through, as well as illegal immigration.
Now, many people don't necessarily know Tohono O'odham as a name
right off the bat; it is the Papago Indian tribe is what we
historically called them, both in the north up more towards Phoenix and
down in the southwest. But the Tohono O'odham view themselves as that
name, and now the Federal Government has recognized them by that.
It is a relatively recent change, just like on our north border up by
where the Mohawk reservation was; now they are called the Akwesasne
Indian reservation, but we have a similar challenge on that side of the
border.
Now, the reason the Shadow Wolves were created is when you have a
separate nation inside your Nation, one of the hardest things for our
drug agents, for our historic INS agents and others to penetrate is
inside an Indian Nation. They are very closed societies. They know who
is going to be where inside that Nation. It is not easy to penetrate.
And here we had one of the most successful tracking organizations,
the Shadow Wolves have been featured in People Magazine, on television,
all sorts of newspapers around the country for years because they
combine modern technology with ancient tracking techniques, combined
with being members inside that Nation to provide law and order inside
that Nation.
They arrested and pursued and identified narcotics smugglers along
their 76 miles of border, and 2.8 million acres, and they would seize
roughly
[[Page H4929]]
100,000 pounds of illegal narcotics every year.
But when we created the Department of Homeland Security, we did
something very unwise. We decided by splitting the CBP, the Customs and
Border Protection, from the ICE agents, we left several agencies in the
lurch. One is the Air and Marine Division that didn't either picket
fence on the border or do investigations inside. So we are trying to
work that out, which has been easier to do over in the water border on
the Gulf of Mexico in the Caribbean Sea, but has been much tougher on
the Mexican land border with the United States.
But the other is, what do you do with a group like the Shadow Wolves?
They don't fit in an ICE box. They have a border, which is where we try
to protect the border, but they also do investigations inside. And the
Department of Homeland Security, in trying to figure out how to deal
with things that don't quite fit, square pegs in a round hole, jammed
them in under CBP, and that meant several things. One is, the Shadow
Wolves, a distinct entity, disappeared because they scattered them,
along with CBP agents, all over the country because it did not fit the
organization structure to say, oh, this is a unique thing on the
southwest border, let's create a unique thing.
So now inside the Tohono O'odham reservation, we have CBP agents that
do not belong to that Nation. We have ICE agents that are not part of
that Nation, and we have got Tohono O'odham Native Americans scattered
all over the United States. It makes no sense. Needless to say, it is
not working that great.
As we look at Nogales and the traffic pouring through in Arizona and
as it moves over to Douglas, as we build more fences, as we put more
agents on the border, guess what happens? They move over to the open
areas, the Barry Goldwater Air Force Range, Tohono O'odham Indian
reservation, and the Fish and Wildlife area to the western part of
Arizona. They are overrun now.
Just in one hearing we had several years ago, during the time of the
hearing, they had had 1,500 pounds of drugs moved through in the
previous 3 months, then 1,500 pounds the previous month. During our
hearing, with all of the different agents around, they snared something
like 1,800 pounds, five different carloads, another group with seven
SUVs going through. They put a Blackhawk on them. This has become a no-
man's zone.
You cannot break organizations if you do not have investigations
within. Rather than breaking up the Shadow Wolves, we should have been
doing a similar thing up in New York State. We need to be looking at
similar things in Montana where the Black Feet are not quite on the
reservation, but how to work with the tribal groups to create tracking
organizations that can do both border and investigations.
Now, this bill is an imperfect solution. It puts them over in ICE.
They basically need to do both things, but since the government
continues to stick with they have got to be either A or B, better be B
than A, because making them scattered along like a picket fence and
working with CBP, wherever they assign them, makes no sense. We need
them back together. We need them as a tracking unit, more like a
historic Customs ICE organization.
What this bill does is transfers them, in fact, back to ICE. It moves
their pay scale to be like ICE special agents. It grants the chief
officer of the Shadow Wolves a rank equivalent to the resident agent in
charge of the ICE investigations and authorizes similar units in areas
such in the Akwesasne Reservation in upstate New York. That is the
basic thrust of the bill.
We know we need to work with the Appropriations Committee. We
addressed this in the Homeland Security appropriations bill, but we
just moved the dollars over. In fact, we will have to work out some
kind of transition, because ICE agents make more than CBP. These people
were trained trackers. Then all of a sudden we put them back on the
border. It makes no sense. And we in Congress, who created this, need
to make sure that we stand behind this great idea before all of them
retire.
Many already took early retirement or quit because they saw no
commitment to keeping them together as a Native American organization.
Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 5589, which directs
the Secretary of Homeland Security to transfer to United States
Immigration and Customs Enforcement all functions of the Customs Patrol
Officers unit operating on the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation. This
legislation responds to an urgent national priority: regaining control
of our borders and stopping the cross-border smuggling of people,
narcotics, and other contraband. I'd like to thank Majority Leader
Boehner, Mr. Shadegg, and Mr. King of Iowa for their leadership in
bringing this joint legislation to the Floor.
The Shadow Wolves are one of the last remaining Customs Patrol
Officer (CPO) units in the country. Created by Congress in 1972, the
Shadow Wolves operate on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation in
southern Arizona, which has 76 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border running
through it. That reservation has historically been a major conduit for
drug smuggling, and the Shadow Wolves--all of them Native Americans who
combine modern technology with traditional, Indian tracking
techniques--are responsible for stopping the smuggling of drugs,
illegal aliens and other contraband between the ports of entry within
the 2.8 million acres of the Tohono O'odham Nation. Just since January
of this year, the Shadow Wolves have interdicted over 15,000 pounds of
illegal drugs that otherwise would have been sold on the streets. The
Shadow Wolves have also assisted numerous Federal law enforcement
agencies with enforcement issues on the reservation.
Despite being one of our most successful anti-smuggling investigative
units, however, the Shadow Wolves are about to disappear altogether.
After the formation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Shadow
Wolves were taken out of their historic location at the Customs Office
of Investigations and arbitrarily assigned to the Tucson Sector of the
Border Patrol. This arrangement has been unworkable, because the
mission and tactics of the Shadow Wolves (who are more like
investigators than patrolmen) simply do not fit the organizational
model of the Border Patrol. The Shadow Wolves have already lost nearly
a quarter of their personnel due to attrition and to date there have
been no qualified replacements.
H.R. 5589 fixes this problem by transferring the Shadow Wolves back
to the Office of Investigations, now located within ICE. Once again,
the Shadow Wolves will be able to do what they do best: find, follow,
and bust major drug and alien smuggling rings, in cooperation with
their fellow Immigration and Customs investigators.
I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 5589, and help the Nation take
yet another major step in regaining control of our borders.
Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time
as I may consume.
(Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi asked and was given permission to revise
and extend his remarks.)
Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R.
5589. It is long past its time. This is a bill that should have long
since been to the floor. This legislation transfers the Shadow Wolves
from Customs and Border Protection to Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and allows the creation of an additional unit.
The Shadow Wolves were created by an act of Congress in 1972 to
address criminal activity along the U.S.-Mexican border. This group,
comprised entirely of American Indians, focused on identifying,
tracking and arresting drug smugglers along 76 miles of the U.S-Mexican
border.
With the aid of the Shadow Wolves, over 800 pounds of illegal
narcotics are seized from smugglers on the reservation on an average
day.
The Shadow Wolves are located in Representative Grijalva's district
in the Tohono O'odham Nation of southwest Arizona. Although he was
unable to be here today, Madam Speaker, he shared with me the
importance of ensuring this bill becomes law.
Representative Grijalva has witnessed firsthand the almost 35 years
of success the Shadow Wolves have had in the region deterring, tracking
and intercepting drug smugglers. Their remarkable record should be
continued.
Allowing the Shadow Wolves to focus on their investigation functions
allows them to better secure our Nation's borders against illegal
drugs. In the future, I would like to work with other Members to
increase the number of officers within existing units.
I urge my colleagues to support the legislation.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
[[Page H4930]]
Mr. SOUDER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, first, let me thank Chairman Pete King of the Homeland
Security Committee and the ranking member, Mr. Thompson, for steadily
standing behind this and also keeping the pressure on the
administration to resolve these types of things, if they will not remix
and back off from their determination to artificially divide this
agency, at least to accommodate the things that do not quite fit the
bureaucratic structure.
I want to thank Chairman Lungren of the subcommittee, as well as
Chairman Rogers of the Homeland Security Appropriations Committee for
keeping the pressure on in spite of the administration's resistance.
I appreciate the support in ICE of Director Myers, Julie Myers, for
her support in trying to work out a compromise and backing off some of
the resistance we have had over the last few years. Congressman John
Shadegg of Arizona has been a leader on this, along with Congressman
Grijalva for a number of years, and his staff has been down there many
times.
We have spent much time on the Arizona border. Congressman Steve King
has become involved in this, as well, from Iowa. And without the
persistence of all of the Members, in addition to the support of the
chairman, we would never be at the stage we are tonight of actually
recognizing that the Shadow Wolves should exist as a separate unit, of
authorizing what we earlier did in the appropriations bill, and see if
we cannot finally get this done.
We thank the individual members of the Shadow Wolves who stayed, and
their patience as we try to put this back together, because this is
important to the reservation. I have talked to tribal leaders there and
individual homeowners there, and they are so frustrated with all of the
crime that is running through their Indian reservation. They so much
want to have their destiny controlled by their own people, to the
degree we can work this out.
I appreciate their patience as we have done a very belabored, long
conflict over how to do this inside Homeland Security. But I think we
are finally nearing the final stages of at least getting them in ICE,
holding them together as a unit, working with the administration, with
the appropriators, with the authorizers. I thank once again Mr.
Thompson, Chairman King and all of the relevant Members for moving this
bill forward.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder) that the House suspend the rules
and pass the bill, H.R. 5589.
The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor
thereof) the rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
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