[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 33 (Tuesday, February 27, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H1959-H1965]
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 18, 2007, the gentleman from Western Iowa (Mr. King) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to be recognized by 
the gentleman from Eastern Iowa and privileged to have the opportunity 
and the honor to address you, Mr. Speaker, on the floor of the United 
States Congress.
  A lot of things have transpired since we took the week off from this 
Congress for the Presidents' recess, we call it, which was really a 
work period back in the district. And our constituents and those in the 
State of Iowa and in some of the areas north and east of us went 
through a severe, severe ice storm that tens of thousands of them are 
without power as we speak. And I know that you and I have an eye on 
that very closely, and we do though have a great confidence in the 
resiliency of the human spirit back in the Midwest, and friends and 
neighbors will step forward to do all they can. And what is within 
human possibility will be done and things will be taken care of there, 
Mr. Speaker.
  So having that off my mind, I take up the subject matter that I came 
to address this evening. And it has been some time since I stepped here 
on the floor of the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker, to talk 
about an issue that is the number one issue as I go around western Iowa 
and Iowa and other places in the country and have meetings with 
individuals, town hall-type meetings.
  Whenever a group of people come together, if you ask questions, stand 
and listen, eventually the subject of immigration will come up. And it 
has been the most intensely watched subject and discussed subject 
perhaps over the last 3 years or a little more, Mr. Speaker.
  I recall when President Bush gave his speech that laid out his vision 
on the immigration reform, and I believe the date was January 6 of 
2004. I am not off by more than a day, if that. And that speech started 
us down this path and this Nation of having an open dialogue about what 
kind of a Nation we are and what kind of a Nation we are to become. And 
this is something that has embroiled most of the discussion across the 
country. Everybody has an opinion. It is a good thing, Mr. Speaker, a 
healthy debate.
  I recall when Pat Buchanan ran for the Presidency back in 1966, he 
said: I will call for hearings. I will force a debate on this country. 
We have got to have a national debate so that we can come to a 
consensus and put this country down the path towards its future.

                              {time}  2245

  We have been intensively debating this issue of immigration for the 
last 3 years, and that would be all of 2004, 2005 and 2006 and we find 
ourselves now into 2007. So I would say we are about 38 months into 
this intense discussion, and the results we have from this are hard to 
measure at this point. One of the reasons is because it is a very 
convoluted and complicated issue.
  We have a configuration here in America that doesn't necessarily 
promote the right kind of policy. I say that, I am cautious about how I 
address it, because first of all, I will recognize that there are 
employers who have premised their business plan on hiring illegal 
labor.
  I can recall in an agricultural hearing that I attended in Stockton, 
California last year, there was a lady there, there was a witness, 
before our Agriculture Committee who ran, I believe it was organic, a 
truck farming operation where they raised peppers and those kinds of 
vegetables down south of Yuma near the border.
  Her complaint was, well, we set up these farms in processing and we 
need over 900 people a day to operate the harvesting and the sorting 
and the packaging and the shipments of this crop every day. Now that we 
have done a better job of enforcing the border, then her lament was 
that they have a turnover of 9 percent per week, 9 percent of their 
labor supply per week, it is about 80, and they are having trouble 
filling their labor supply.
  So I asked the question, where did you expect your labor supply to 
come from when you placed your business close to the border? And the 
answer was, of course, well we expected our labor to come over from 
Mexico and come work on our farms and then go back to their homes. 
Well, that would be illegal labor working on farms south of Yuma with 
the idea that was the plan from the beginning.
  Now, the request was, come to Congress and ask us to legalize this 
illegal behavior. It was a planned strategy from the very beginning of 
the setup of the business operation.
  I lay this out because this is not a unique circumstance across this 
country. In fact, it is becoming a standard practice. I am seeing it 
more and more again as businesses set up to run their operation, 
whether it is going to be food processing or farming or maybe a dairy 
operation, and they decide, we are going to need labor to do this.
  We would like to go forward with our plan and put our infrastructure 
in place, invest our capital, buy our cows, get our equipment up and 
get an order in. We will have to hire some illegal labor to milk the 
cows.
  I had a dairyman tell me a couple of weeks ago that 51 percent of the 
milk in this country are milked by people that don't speak English. 
That doesn't necessarily indicate they are illegal immigrants in 
America, but that would indicate that a significant percentage of them 
most likely are.
  That is some of the scenario. Some of the scenario on the one side is 
business interests that can capitalize on cheap labor. Believe me, when 
you pour millions of people into a labor market that are illiterate and 
unskilled that will work cheaper than anybody else, you are going to 
drive that labor down.
  There was a report that was issued here within the last few weeks 
that shows that the unskilled labor in America has lost 12 percent of 
its earning capacity because they are flooded. There was a report on 
Fox News about a month ago that we have a 30 percent high school 
dropout rate in America, 30 percent dropout rate.
  So if the students in high schools are dropping out at a 30 percent 
rate, and we are bringing in illegal labor that will work for the 
cheapest price, it seemed to me, and we know this to be a fact, that 
the competition between our high school dropouts and the people that 
didn't go to school, many of

[[Page H1960]]

them, from foreign countries that come in, would be clashing in 
competition for those jobs that require a low education. Maybe they 
require a strong back and some resilience and persistence.
  But the opportunity for undereducated, especially young people in 
America, those dropouts, those that go on to get a college education, 
those opportunities, are going to people that are living sometimes 22 
or 30 to a house. They will work cheaper than anybody else.
  What has happened is our young people that don't want to go off to 
college, maybe they are not blessed with the ability to do that, maybe 
they just decide, I want to punch a clock, I want to wear a blue 
collar, not a white collar. I am happy enough to go do some labor for 
my life, but leave me alone. Let me take care of my wife and my family. 
Let me go fishing once in a while, but I don't really want to go off to 
college and study. Those opportunities are diminishing significantly in 
America. What that spells is the narrowing of the middle class in 
America.
  We are doing a good job of educating the people in the higher end, 
those that go off and get their master's and their doctorate. Those 
will become professional people that often start out at college at six 
figures and go up from there. That part, that percentage of our 
population is growing significantly. I am grateful that is the case. We 
have encouraged a lot of young people to move off into the professions, 
and they are doing that. That is to the credit of our educational 
system in this country.
  So the upper class is expanding, and there is money being made. We 
have had unprecedented economic growth thanks to the Bush tax cuts, 
both rounds in 2001 and in 2003. We have had this unprecedented string 
of growth. That has helped lift investors up, lift entrepreneurs up, 
and, of course, the professionals have been lifted up also because 
there is more money in the market.
  So the upper class of America is growing and expanding and 
prospering. The lower class in America, that unskilled cheap labor, is 
also growing in numbers, but not growing in prosperity.
  As we see the stratification of this society, and think of it in 
terms of a healthy America that once had a growing ever-more-prosperous 
middle class is now becoming an America that has a growing, ever-more-
prosperous upper class, a growing ever-more-prosperous lower class, and 
a shrinking more suppressed, more constrained middle class.
  That is the scenario that is driven by illegal immigration in 
America, and illegal immigration in America keeps us from having a 
legitimate debate on the subject matter of how we might go about 
recruiting the best people we can find to come into the United States, 
those that will assimilate the most easily, those that bring their 
already trained skills, those that will be contributors instead of 
those that are drawing down off of the public system. Those will be 
contributors in the first day, the first week, the first month, the 
first year.
  They are across this world with good educations, and they would love 
to come to America, and they fit into our economy. All you have to do 
is teach them their ZIP code and their area code and hand them a cell 
phone, and in a week you wouldn't know that they were not born here. 
They would assimilate into this culture and into this civilization.
  But we can't carry on a reasonable discussion about how to skim the 
cream of the world off like we used to do, bring them into America so 
that we can enhance this American exceptionalism. We can't get there 
because the entire debate has clouded because we are not controlling 
our borders. We are not stopping the illegal traffic at our borders. We 
are not doing an adequate job of employer sanctions, although we have 
had some significant efforts of late, and that means that there is a 
magnet that draws people across the border. That is the issue that we 
are dealing with, and the price for Americans is horrendous.
  I went back down to the border last week. I spent 2 days down there. 
I flew into Phoenix and then took a ride from Phoenix on down to Yuma. 
I joined Secretary Chertoff there at the Yuma station along with the 
chief of the Border Patrol, David Aguilar, and a number of Members of 
Congress and a couple of Senators. We went down south, just on the 
south edge of San Luis, which is the most southwesterly town in Arizona 
on the Mexican border.
  There, for some time, they have had about a 12-foot high steel 
landing mat wall placed almost exactly on the border. That has been the 
only barrier that they have had between the two semiurban areas that 
are there.
  Well, here in Congress, last fall, we passed the Secure Fence Act, 
and the Secure Fence Act mandates that the administration build not 700 
miles of fence, but 854 miles of double fence/wall on our southern 
border in the most priority areas that are defined in the bill. Those 
priority areas, when you go back and you measure the distances there in 
the bill, it adds up to 854 miles. One of those priority areas is San 
Luis where we went to visit.
  At that priority area, they are beginning to construct fencing there, 
and at least it is a start. I can't call it a great start or a good 
start, but at least it is a start. They have a start to building the 
kinds of structures we need to stop the illegal crossings that are 
taking place at our border.
  There with about 12-foot high steel landing mat wall which each of us 
stopped and took a turn welding on there a little bit, I wish I could 
have stayed and gotten a little work done, it felt kind of good, but 
there we lent a hand to continuing construction of the wall on the 
border. Inside about 100 feet, they had constructed a 16-foot high 
steel mesh fence, and that has got a metal frame on top of it. The 
steel mesh is essentially impenetrable unless you take a torch or 
something to cut it with.
  So from the steel wall on the border, 100 feet back, 16-foot high 
steel mesh fence or wall, and then another about 40 feet and there is 
about a 10-foot high chain link fence with three to four barbs on top, 
it looks like a playground fence, actually. As we discussed the 
effectiveness of the structures that they had put in place, and we are 
continuing to construct at San Luis, Arizona, I asked the question if 
anyone had made it through that area since they had gotten the triple 
fencing up.
  The answer came back, well, we have had several that have made it 
through here; but 2 years ago, there were 138,000 illegal crossers who 
were interdicted by the Border Patrol in that area.
  Since October of last year, until just last week, they were now down 
to 15,000 that had passed across the border. Now that is not a full 
year, obviously, so it is not quite apples to apples, but it is 
significantly fewer illegal crossings there.
  But then I asked the specific question again, has anyone gone through 
this area where the triple fencing is? The answer is, well, we think, 
maybe, yes, three. How did they get through here? A couple of them 
perhaps went through the waterway and maybe one went around.
  The next question, of course, was more finely tuned which is, has 
anyone defeated this triple fencing yet? The answer is, no, they have 
not defeated the triple fencing, but they said they will; all 
structures we put in place will be defeated. We have to work, we have 
to maintain them.
  I have to agree. I think you have to maintain them. I think you have 
to patrol them. I think you need to put sensors on them so you can 
identify if somebody is trying to climb through over the top or under 
the bottom or cut through, and that, I believe, is in the mix.
  So we did a driving tour on the border and from there, San Luis, 
drove along the east, along the border, and the triple fencing reduces 
down to double fencing. The 10-foot chain link doesn't go all that far 
yet. It is being extended. Then pretty soon the 16-foot high second 
layer of fence is under construction, but it is not there either.
  You are just down to the steel wall, and not very long after that, 
the steel wall is gone, and you are left with the construction of the 
steel wall that is being put in place. It extends from San Luis off to 
the east. If I remember right, they were going to extend it about 19 
miles to the east. We are a long ways to go on that yet.
  But we got up, in a couple of Black Hawks, and flew the border then 
going east from there, in the southwest corner, all the way almost to 
Nogales and

[[Page H1961]]

then turned around and went on up to Tucson. As you fly along the 
border, you will see there are places the border isn't even marked. 
There is just sand, not a fence. There is a little trail on our side, 
and there is a Highway 2 on their side. But there is not a mark of 
where the border is in many of those locations.
  It has been an easy prospect for people on the Mexican side of the 
border to drive along on Highway 2 in Mexico, decide they want to go to 
the United States, turn the steering wheel off of Highway 2, go out 
across the desert to the north, and end up on a road 10 or 20 miles to 
the north, driving through the desert and come out on that road, and, 
voila, they are home free in the United States of America.
  That has been going on consistently and continually. It is being done 
by people smugglers; it is being done by drug smugglers. So along that 
stretch, they are constructing also a vehicle barrier. And this vehicle 
barrier exists of, I believe it is 5 inch by 5 inch steel tubing that 
is driven in on about 5 or 6 foot centers with that tubing welded to it 
at about bumper high on a vehicle or on a pickup truck, and then 
concrete poured inside those posts.
  That does keep most of those vehicles from crashing through, so it 
makes pedestrians of people who want to come to the United States. It 
is a little slower way to travel through the desert. We happen to have 
discovered, I don't know, 25 or 50 miles east of San Luis, a group of 
about 20 illegals who were perhaps about half a mile into the United 
States, and they had clustered around the base of a mesquite tree. As 
we turned the helicopters around and we turned back to take a look, the 
rotor wash on a Black Hawk is pretty severe in the desert, and it was 
something that encouraged them to head south rather briskly. So they 
headed south towards the Mexican border, and we apparently called for 
backup and then moved on.
  But there in broad daylight, a half a mile north of the border with 
traffic going back and forth on the Mexican highway on Highway 2, were 
a group of about 20 illegals, working their way across the desert. If 
we run across them with the type of, I will say, helicopter caravan we 
were in, then that was not an anomaly. That was something I would say 
would be standard practice that goes on a daily basis.

                              {time}  2300

  But most of the activity, Mr. Speaker, takes place at night. And I 
have gone down on the border at night and sat on the fence in the dark 
and listened, and just listened, not with night vision equipment but 
just listened. And over time, you hear vehicles come in from the 
Mexican side and drive with their lights off down through the mesquite 
brush, stop by a big mesquite tree about 150 yards south of the border, 
let their cargo out, which were people and packs and you can hear them 
get out. You can hear them drop their pack on the ground. Presumably 
they pick them back up again. There will be some hushed whispers and 
then, Mr. Speaker, they will, single file, come walk through the 
mesquite brush through the fence, and I am talking about a place 
further east in Arizona where there is a fence, and climb through the 
five barbed wire fence.
  You can hear the fence kind of squeak and you see the shadows. You 
can't really count shadows, especially when you are sitting there in 
the dark. It is awfully hard to be certain of what you see, but it is 
not that hard to be certain of what you hear in an environment like 
that. So I will say dozens infiltrated around me the night that I sat 
down there, Mr. Speaker, and perhaps 20 there in broad daylight as we 
flew by with the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Chief of the 
Border Patrol, and two Blackhawk helicopters that make a lot of noise, 
and you can hear them coming quite a long ways off, still didn't deter 
the daylight illegal crossings taking place.
  And as I look at the numbers of those who are coming across that 
southern border, and I would direct anyone's attention to the testimony 
before the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee in the 
109th Congress, Mr. Speaker, and also in the 108th Congress, where we 
had a number of witnesses that testified for the Border Patrol or the 
Border Patrol Union when asked what level of interdiction do you have 
of those that are crossing the border illegally, what percentage are 
you able to arrest? And their answer has consistently been 25 to 30 
percent is all that would be interdicted.
  So, Mr. Speaker, their testimony also shows that last year, the 
Border Patrol on the southern border, the 2000 miles of our Mexican 
border, intercepted, 1,188,000 illegal immigrants who were seeking to 
cross our southern border. Intercepted, 1,188,000, and now we are to 
that point where we fingerprint them all, at least that is what the 
testimony says, and that their fingerprints go into the record so we 
can track them if their's are duplicate or triplicate or have been 
stopped a number of times at the border. And at some point we need to 
be running out of patience and bringing charges against them, lock them 
up, make them serve their time and then deport them. Some of that is 
happening, but our patience level is very high.
  But of the 1,188,000, I don't have the precise numbers committed to 
memory, but as close as I can recall, it was about 742,000 that were 
first time crossers, and the balance of that, the difference between 
1,188,000 and 742,000, that 400-some thousand number represents those 
who crossed the border illegally that year more than once, two times, 
three times, four times, seven, eight times on up to 17 times, would be 
one of the numbers that I have heard as they looked at those records, 
Mr. Speaker. This is something that we are spending $8 billion to 
protect our southern border. That is $4 million a mile.
  And we are getting 25 percent to 33 percent efficiency out of that. 
And we are picking people up over and over again. And if they 
voluntarily deport, we simply take their fingerprints, identify them, 
take a digital photograph of them and take them back to the border and 
let them go back through the turnstile, say, at Nogales or Naco or San 
Luis or wherever there might be a port of entry. This enforcement at 
the border has been weak and it hasn't been relentless. The year before 
it was a 1,159,000. And this stopping one-third, one fourth to a third 
calculates out to be something like four million illegal border 
crossers a year. Four million. If you take the 1,188,000 and you say it 
is a fourth, multiply it times four and then just kind of round it back 
to four million, that four million illegal crossers turns out to be 
11,000 a night, Mr. Speaker.
  And we are in a discussion across this country today about 7,000 
Iraqis that the administration wants to provide refuge in the United 
States for by doing background checks and clearing them and bringing 
them here so that they will not be under the gun, so to speak, in Iraq 
and they can be pulled away if they happen to be targeted by the 
insurgents and the enemy for helping the United States.
  That concerns me that we would be bringing people out of Iraq when 
they need people there to help rebuild their country. And it concerns 
me that we would have a number that large, and I would seek to reduce 
that number, if we could, shrink it down as much as possible, do 
background checks as intensively as we can because I think it is a 
national security issue and how many al Qaeda could be infiltrated into 
that 7,000 Iraqis that would want to come in here that would be 
authorized by the administration, and how many more might there be if 
we open for 7,000.
  But by the same token, the relative risk of having 7,000 Iraqis that 
we would have identified by name, by fingerprint and been able to at 
least verify some of their activities over the last 5 years or longer 
in Iraq, the relative danger to the United States pales in comparison 
to 11,000 illegal immigrants a night trickling, pouring, infiltrating 
across our southern border. 11,000. I mean, we are approaching twice, 
some nights it is twice as many as the 7,000 Iraqis. The 7,000 Iraqis 
are still a significantly sized number. But the southern border takes 
on a number approaching twice that many every single night, without any 
background check, without any check whatsoever, people coming into this 
country; some to come to work, some to pick lettuce, some to get jobs 
working in food processing and restaurants and hotels and motels and 
you name it across the country. It is still a violation of American 
law. It is still a crime, Mr. Speaker.

[[Page H1962]]

  But the worst parts of this aren't rooted in individuals that are 
seeking a better life, although we must enforce our laws if we are 
going to be a Nation that has the rule of law. But what is really 
chilling is the elements that come with that mass of humanity, those 
elements that come in with that $65 billion worth of illegal drugs that 
comes across our Mexican border every year.
  Mr. Speaker, I repeat, $65 billion, with a B, dollars worth of 
illegal drugs being brought into the United States across our southern 
border. And the drugs are, the four major drugs, methamphetamine, 
heroin, cocaine and marijuana. And the sources of them work out to be 
about like this, the methamphetamines, many of them manufactured in 
Mexico, from Chinese pseudoephedrine products. Now we have taken the 
Sudafed off the shelves here in the United States, most places in an 
effective way so that we have taken the local meth cooker pretty much 
out of business. And the meth that was coming into my part of the 
country in Iowa and your part, Mr. Speaker, was about 90 percent 
Mexican meth until we passed the law that took those pseudoephedrines 
off the shelf in our pharmacies and in our grocery stores, limited 
those quantities.
  People can still have access in limited quantities. When we did that 
the DEA tells me now that the methamphetamines that are being sold in 
our part of the country, in Iowa, Nebraska and that Midwest area, it 
was 90 percent Mexican. Now it is 97 percent, and the balance of that 
trickles in from other places, maybe a California lab, maybe a few 
local labs, but not much. 97 percent now out of Mexico. We expected 
that. And we freed up a lot of officers time that are not having to 
clean up the dangerous meth labs, and put those officers in a better 
position to interdict the drug dealers. But the meth coming from 
Mexico, made from Chinese pseudo ephedrine that gets brought into 
Mexico in numbers way beyond the level of colds that they have down 
there for the number of people that they have, and that ought to set 
off some alarm bells. But that is being smuggled in. The meth is being 
smuggled across the border into the United States in massive supplies, 
numbers at least over 90 percent of the meth that is used in the United 
States now coming through, the raw product, the base product out of 
China to Mexico, manufactured in Mexico, shipped into the United 
States. That is the facts of methamphetamines. Much of the marijuana 
comes from any place south, a lot of it raised right in Mexico, and 
tons and tons of it hauled across the border. I happen to have been 
down there, it was in the middle part of last May when we interdicted a 
pickup truck that had about, let's see, it had about 200 pounds of 
marijuana packaged up in bales and sealed up in tape that was 
underneath a false floor in a pickup truck, Mr. Speaker.

                              {time}  2310

  That was just simply a decoy load that was designed to pull the 
enforcement off so the larger load could go through. I don't know if it 
actually made it through, but that is the kind of thing that is going 
on. Tons and tons of marijuana coming into the United States across the 
border, Mr. Speaker, a lot of it raised right in Mexico. And then we 
have the heroin that is smuggled in, and that heroin, a lot of it, also 
comes out of China.
  And those of us that have visited over in Afghanistan in the poppy 
fields understand how that works. We have the Taliban that are engaged 
in the poppy and in the opium trade. They will front the crops in 
Pakistan, walk out into those farming areas along on the east side of 
Afghanistan that match up against the border with Pakistan, and pay for 
half of that crop upfront to the grower, to the farmer. It is a nice 
little crop agreement, and they pay for half the crop upfront. They 
come back when the harvest is done. They load up the poppy seeds/opium 
and pay for the other half of the crop. The farmer comes off fine 
because he doesn't have to haul any crop. He doesn't have to take 
anything to town. He gets paid upfront for his input costs and he gets 
paid for his harvest.
  And off goes the opium then, hauled away by the Taliban, who sell it 
out of Pakistan into China and out of China over into Mexico and up 
into the United States. And, again, we are funding our enemies, Mr. 
Speaker. And the smuggling routes that go from Afghanistan through 
Pakistan through China and across into Mexico, up into the United 
States, are routes that are understood pretty well by our DEA.
  And let me see. I left off one other drug, Mr. Speaker, and that is 
cocaine. And if one would notice, a lot of that cocaine was getting 
into the United States perhaps through our airports before 9/11. We 
shut that down and provided a significant amount of security at our 
airports after that. Drug dog sniffers, a lot more sophisticated 
screening process. When that happened, the Colombians had difficulty 
delivering their cocaine into the United States, and finally they cut a 
deal with the Mexicans so that they could use the distribution of the 
Mexican drug cartel families to flow their cocaine up into the United 
States.
  So across our southern Border comes 90 percent of the illegal drugs 
that are used in the United States of America because those conduits 
that come out of Colombia, out of China, two different varieties out of 
China, and then the marijuana that is mostly raised in Mexico, all of 
that coming across the border, coming through illegal border crossings, 
coming across places where the border is not marked at all, and the 
drug cartel families that control those crossings fight for those. And 
the numbers that we have seen that have been killed in the drug wars in 
Mexico for 2006 exceed the number 2,000 deaths, the people that were 
murdered in the struggle for who is going to control the turf, who is 
going to control the profit. And the cities on the south side, Nuevo 
Laredo for one of those, that area has become a lawless land that is 
controlled by the drug cartels.
  I will say that the new President of Mexico has stepped in to crack 
down on some of that. The jury is still out on how successful he might 
be. But these are important components here for us in the United States 
of America.
  So here we are with this dynamic growing economy, the strongest 
economy we have seen in my lifetime. The continual growth quarter by 
quarter by quarter that is stimulated, of course, by having a 
competitive low tax environment. And with an economy that has this kind 
of dynamism, we are able to pay for two things that come from foreign 
countries that have hurt us greatly: one is the illegal drugs, the $65 
billion worth coming across the Mexican border; and another one is 
paying for Middle Eastern oil and enriching the people over in that 
part of the world, many of whom are our sworn enemies, not our sworn 
friends. So we are funding our enemies by purchasing illegal drugs in 
America, and we are funding many of our enemies just simply because we 
are involved in purchasing oil to come into the United States. And we 
are more and more dependent on Middle Eastern oil, not less and less 
dependent.
  But I am here to talk about the immigration issue, the illegal border 
crossing, Mr. Speaker, and the component of illegal drugs that are part 
of that. And I mentioned the 2,000 murder victims on the Mexican side 
of the border that were killed in the drug wars. And we will hear the 
testimony continually about how many people die in the Arizona desert 
trying to come into the United States. And as the weather warms up and 
we get into May, June, July, and August, the hotter and hotter it gets, 
the more victims there are in the desert. And it is sad and it is a 
tragedy, and we are doing some things to stop that. But I will argue 
that if we build some more fence, we build some more barrier, we can 
save some more lives down on that border. Those lives are a concern, 
Mr. Speaker, and we talk about them regularly and continually here in 
this Congress.
  The lives that we don't talk about are the lives of the Americans who 
die at the hands of the criminal elements that come into the United 
States. And it has been politically incorrect to discuss such a thing 
as if we should just sit back and watch our citizens killed on a daily 
basis. Preventable crimes and we shouldn't utter a peep because somehow 
or another it might be interpreted as something that is based upon 
anything other than a love for the rule of law and the enforcement of 
law and the respect for the value of human life.
  But I stand firmly in respect for the unique intrinsic value of human 
life, from conception, fertilization, to natural death. That is my 
record for more

[[Page H1963]]

than 10 years in public life, Mr. Speaker, and it is my stand today. It 
has not changed. It will not change. And I stand for the defense of the 
American people so that they can be safe in their homes, on the streets 
in their communities, in their schools, in their workplaces, in their 
churches, wherever they gather. The American people need to be safe.
  So I began to ask the question, Mr. Speaker: How many Americans die 
at the hands of those who do make it across the border and across the 
desert? I didn't have a concept of what that number would be, Mr. 
Speaker, until such time as I asked the question in the immigration 
hearing. I asked it a number of times of different ranks of witnesses 
that were there. The question again was: How many Americans die at the 
hands of those who do make it across the desert?
  And one of the witnesses, his answer was: ``I don't know the answer 
to that question, but I can tell you it would be in multiples of the 
victims of September 11.'' Now, that, Mr. Speaker, is a stopper when 
you think about such a concept. And when he uttered that concept, it 
started me thinking, and shortly thereafter I commissioned a GAO study, 
and the study was specifically designed to ask that question, how many 
Americans die at the hands of those who do make it illegally across the 
border? The study came back. It took about a year to get the study 
done. It wasn't quite apples to apples. That is the nature of things in 
government sometimes.
  But it did put some facts in place that could be indexed to other 
existing studies and other existing data that the government has 
produced. So I shut myself up in the Library of Congress sometimes for 
several days to be able to concentrate hard enough to pull that data 
out of that report and use other reports and match them in so I would 
be able to compare apples to apples. And it comes down to something 
like this, Mr. Speaker: twenty-eight percent of the inmates in the 
prisons in the United States, Federal and State, are criminal aliens. 
Twenty-eight percent. Now, if you presume that those 28 percent are 
committing crimes in the same proportion of the rest of the inmates, 
since there are no records out there, you have to presume that 28 
percent of the rape; 28 percent of the robberies; 28 percent of the 
grand theft auto; 28 percent of the first, second, and third degree 
murder, manslaughter, all of that is committed by criminal aliens. And 
there is no rationale that it could be anything else unless it would be 
more rather than less.
  So I take that 28 percent, and I multiply it, and we have about 
16,400 murders in the United States annually. And you take that times 
.28 and you come up with a number of something like 4,513, perhaps, 
would be the number of American murder victims representing that 28 
percent, which is the population of our prisons that are criminal 
aliens. Now, that is a huge number and already that is more than the 
victims of September 11 on one day. But that would be an annual number.
  And then if you look at some of the other fatalities out there, the 
highest group of fatalities are those victims of negligent homicide.

                              {time}  2320

  Most times, negligent homicide, Mr. Speaker, is the case of the 
victims of drunk drivers; not the drunks themselves, but the victims of 
the drunk drivers.
  So as people come into the United States illegally, climb behind a 
steering wheel, drink and drive, often uninsured, not knowing our 
traffic laws, not having a sense of responsibility, but running into 
victims on the streets of America, that number is a number a little 
higher than the 4,500 or so that are victims of first and second degree 
murder and manslaughter. But the negligent homicide, mostly victims of 
drunk drivers, runs a little higher.
  But it boils down to, when you do the math, shake it down to a day, 
about 12 Americans every day murdered at the hands of criminal aliens. 
Statistically, that is a solid number that has been tested across this 
country. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, it is a number that the liberals 
hate to hear, but they have produced no competing data that can 
challenge this GAO study data that has been multiplied into other 
government data like crime rates to come up with these numbers: About 
12 Americans a day, first and second degree murder victims or 
manslaughter victims, dead, buried; about 13 Americans a day die at the 
hands because of negligent homicide, most of them victims of drunk 
driving.
  All of these crimes, Mr. Speaker, all of them are preventible if we 
enforce our immigration laws. If we would deport those people when they 
run afoul of the law, if we are able to control our borders, get 
operational control of our borders, force all traffic, all human 
traffic, all contraband, all cargo, everything that is coming across 
the border through the ports-of-entry, and then beef up the ports-of-
entry, focus our surveillance there, probably have to widen them and 
put more personnel down so we are not backing traffic up, but if we 
could force all the traffic through the ports-of-entry and do a good 
job there, we would theoretically interdict all illegal human traffic, 
all illegal drug traffic.
  We would also occasionally interdict a terrorist who is seeking to 
sneak into the United States. I happen to know of seven individuals who 
were persons of interest from nations of interest, which is a 
government euphemism, Mr. Speaker, for someone who is a likely 
terrorist who hails from a terrorist spawning or terrorist sponsoring 
country. I know of seven.
  When they are identified, picked up by the Border Patrol or whatever 
the arresting officer happens to be, there is a little window there to 
find out about it. Then they are handed over to the FBI, which then 
makes that case classified. At that point those officers can't talk to 
me or anyone about it after that.
  So if they told me about something that happened today and the FBI 
picks them up 5 minutes from now and takes them into custody and says 
this is now a classified case, 10 minutes from now they can no longer 
even repeat the things they said to me 10 minutes ago, because it is 
now formally a classified case. So I have a little 24 hour window to 
hear about this.
  My network is not that good, but I know of seven. I don't know how 
many that is altogether. It might be 70. It is probably well more than 
70 persons of interest from nations of interest, people who we think 
are at least likely terrorist suspects coming across our southern 
border, sneaking into the United States, wishing us ill will, ready to 
act on that ill will. That threat is there too.
  The crime element, the drug element, the terrorist element, all of 
that is added to the depression of the value of our labor force here in 
the United States, in fact the lower skilled being pushed down by 
reducing their wages by 12 percent because of the millions who have 
been injected into that market. We have gotten dependent upon it over 
the years.
  Mr. Speaker, this part about the violence perpetrated against 
Americans is something that I have given the broad statistics of 12 
victims a day of murder, 13 of negligent homicide, 25 altogether. 
Almost every single day the casualties of Americans at the hands of 
criminal aliens, most of that preventible if we enforce our laws, those 
casualties are almost every day greater than the numbers of American 
casualties in Iraq. They absolutely total up to be something that are 
in multiples of the victims of September 11.
  These are Americans that need to have their lives protected. We need 
to have our laws enforced, we need to get operational control of the 
border, we need to have cooperation at the local law enforcement level, 
Mr. Speaker.
  To personalize this a little bit, statistics are one thing. We can 
talk about statistics. Some people understand the magnitude of that. 
Some people understand personal pain and evil people. So, I have picked 
a selection of evil people here, Mr. Speaker.
  My number one evil person is this individual here. His name is Angel 
Maturino Resendiz. He is known as, and we will recognize his name, the 
Railroad Killer. This individual for nearly 2 years, a 39-year-old 
illegal alien from Mexico, literally followed America's railroad tracks 
to rape and kill unsuspecting victims.
  Resendiz struck near the rail lines that he illegally rode and then 
he stowed away on the next freight train that came his way. He is 
responsible

[[Page H1964]]

for as many as 15 serial murders, and the victims' ages range from 16 
to 81. He attacked his victims with rocks, sledgehammers, shotguns and 
tire irons, sometimes in their homes, and sometimes he stole money for 
alcohol or drugs. Most of these murders took place in central Texas, 
but it is suspected he killed as far north as Kentucky and Illinois.
  He has been apprehended by the Border Patrol in Texas and New Mexico 
eight times within 18 months, and he had been, and I emphasize this, 
voluntarily returned to Mexico each of those eight times in those 18 
months.
  Eight times he volunteered to return to Mexico when he was stopped by 
the Border Patrol, and then he would come back into the United States, 
and sometimes it happened quite quickly, come back to kill again.
  On June 1, 1999, there were State and Federal warrants outstanding 
for Resendiz and there were intensive efforts underway to arrest him. 
Border Patrol agents in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, apprehended Resendiz. 
He was illegally crossing the border again, and he voluntarily was 
returned to Mexico, even though there were outstanding warrants on him. 
The Border Patrol was unaware that there were warrants out, but he was 
on the FBI's top 10 list. Still, picked up as an illegal border crosser 
and voluntarily returned, self-deportation, so-to-speak, back to 
Mexico.
  How does this happen, that an individual that is in the FBI's top 10 
most wanted list, we have him in our hands eight times, and this time, 
on June 1, 1999, while there were outstanding Federal warrants, we 
couldn't index his fingerprints to that data there with the system we 
had in 1999 and put this man behind bars before he killed again? But we 
couldn't under those circumstances.
  I am advised that today, everyone that is picked up is printed and 
their fingerprints are run through the database, Mr. Speaker, and 
presumably we would catch the next Resendiz perpetrator. It didn't 
happen in 1999.
  So they released him, and Resendiz, after he had gone back to Mexico, 
immediately found his way back into the United States, where within 48 
hours he killed four more innocent people.
  He was finally traced and captured by a determined Texas ranger in 
July of 1999, and then he was ultimately executed at Huntsville, Texas, 
June 27, 2006.
  This man here, Angel Maturino Resendiz, killed at least 15 people. 
Now he has been executed as of June 27, 2006. But it is something that 
could have been prevented, Mr. Speaker, if we had had an intense effort 
to enforce our border. When they come through the second time, if we 
are not willing to use the fullest extent of the law at that point and 
provide a deterrent, these kind of things happen.
  What was he afraid of? He surely wasn't afraid to be picked up again 
on the border. He knew he would be returned back to Mexico again. 
Finally a determined Texas ranger hunted him down. Thank God for that 
kind of effort and that kind of man.
  Now, that is Resendiz, Mr. Speaker. That is the face of evil. It is 
not the only face of evil, but that is a face of evil.

                              {time}  2330

  He is one of those who contributes to those thousands of Americans 
who have been victimized in the fashion I have described.
  This is another one, Mr. Speaker, Raul Gomez-Garcia. Many of us know 
this story, and this will take us into the discussion of the situation 
that exists in Denver and in many of the cities across America that 
have established a sanctuary policy.
  This case has been brought to a conclusion with a conviction and a 
sentencing, and I can talk straight up about it. Raul Gomez-Garcia, a 
cop killer. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison for second degree 
murder, not first degree murder. But as the police officers that were 
guarding a family celebration which I understand was Raul Gomez-
Garcia's family celebration, I believe it was a christening or a 
baptism of a daughter of his, Raul Gomez-Garcia left the party and went 
to come back in and they would not let him back in because he didn't 
have identification or whatever the reason was. At any rate, Gomez-
Garcia lost his temper and on May 8, 2005, ambushed two officers, 
Officer Donnie Young who was shot in the back of the neck, I believe, 
and killed, and Officer Jack Bishop, whose bulletproof vest saved him 
when he was shot in the back by Mr. Gomez-Garcia, and who immediately 
escaped to Mexico.
  The way I recall this case, we knew he was heading that way. As he 
got into Mexico, he believed he had sanctuary there. The policy was 
Mexico wouldn't extradite murderers to the United States if they were 
faced with a death penalty, which would be the case here for this kind 
of a crime.
  And then over time because the Mexican courts had ruled that the 
death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment and therefore they were 
not going to send their citizens to the United States to face a death 
penalty, no matter what kind of a crime they committed, and the 
disrespect for the laws here in the United States that come from the 
courts in Mexico I think cannot be overlooked, either, Mr. Speaker, but 
that was the position that the Mexican courts took, that the death 
penalty was cruel and unusual, and so they found some people that they 
wouldn't encourage to come to the United States. That was those people 
who were provided sanctuary within Mexico who hid behind the decisions 
made by the Mexican courts and Mexican laws.
  Then over time the same court ruled that life in prison was also 
cruel and unusual punishment. So what would be appropriate punishment 
for an individual like this, Raul Gomez-Garcia, who shot two cops, 
killed one, the other one saved by his bulletproof vest, ripped Donnie 
Young out of his family's life, left a daughter without a father, and 
put all of that pain and agony on the community and on the family and 
the neighborhood and put a wound into this Nation, and absconded to 
Mexico and the Mexican courts say even life in prison is too cruel and 
unusual for someone who commit such a cruel and unusual act?
  So the prosecuting attorney had to cut a deal. He had to lower the 
charge to second degree murder where the maximum sentence was 80 years 
in prison which Raul Gomez-Garcia received at his sentencing that took 
place last October 26 in Denver.
  But the big problem with this is Raul Gomez-Garcia had been stopped a 
number of times by the Denver Police Department. The sanctuary laws 
that they have in Denver say that they can't inquire into the lawful 
presence or the immigration status of anyone that they stop. Therefore, 
Raul Gomez-Garcia was released each time he was stopped for his traffic 
violations, car accidents, whatever the incidents of confrontation 
might have been. Gomez-Garcia was allowed to go back on the streets, 
back behind the steering wheel, back behind a gun, back behind the 
backs of two police officers and shoot them in the back, killing 
Officer Donnie Young.
  All of this could have been prevented if we sealed our borders, 
stopped the bleeding at the borders; and failing that, when Gomez-
Garcia arrived in Denver with his first encounter with the Denver 
Police Department, he should have been picked up and deported back to 
Mexico on the spot. That is what the law says. But Denver says they are 
a sanctuary city, and that means they want to be a welcoming place for 
people who come here illegally.
  The price that is paid is the life of Donnie Young. I think it is a 
tragedy and it is amazing to me that the citizens of Denver will put up 
with a policy that will protect murderers within their midst and not 
enforce our Federal law. And the very idea that because you are local 
law enforcement and you have a few city ordinances and speed limits and 
issues like that to enforce, the very idea that because you are a city 
police officer you don't cooperate or enforce Federal law is anathema 
to a Nation that is founded upon the rule of law.
  I grew up in a law enforcement family, and there was no concept in 
those years that any law enforcement officer was absolved from 
enforcing any of our laws.
  Can you imagine a Nation or a world where only Federal agents could 
enforce Federal laws, and only State agents could enforce State laws, 
and Highway Patrol officers could only enforce the State speeding laws, 
not the

[[Page H1965]]

local speed limits, and your city police officers could only enforce 
the city ordinances and the local traffic laws? And county officers, 
what are they going to do? They don't have enough ordinances to enforce 
anything. All they could do under this kind of rationale would be serve 
papers and keep the jail and maybe leave us otherwise alone. It is not 
conducive to a free state to have sanctuary policy or to live under the 
delusion that you don't have the responsibility to enforce immigration 
laws because you happen to be wearing a blue uniform of a Denver Police 
Department.
  The result is Denver police officers, shot, killed by Gomez-Garcia, 
who had no business being in the United States and we had many 
opportunities to send him back to his own country and keep him there or 
incarcerate him here in the United States until he had paid the price 
for the others crimes he had committed.
  Here is what is shocking to me, Mr. Speaker. Denver Police Chief 
Gerry Whitman said the case, Gomez-Garcia, ``sends the message that 
Denver and its criminal justice system stand behind the police.'' How 
does that work? How can you stand behind the police when you have 
Gomez-Garcia standing behind the police and putting bullets into them, 
and you have picked up and turned the very man loose that you had the 
opportunity to stop before he took one of your fellow officers?
  That is what happens with a sanctuary policy. Donnie Young was one of 
thousands. The face here is another face of evil, Mr. Speaker. And the 
face of the victims are not here on this floor tonight, but it is a 
tragedy just the same.
  And I have another tragedy.
  This is Jose Luis Rubi-Nava.
  Now, this individual has been arrested and he has I believe been 
indicted on other charges, so we are going to say ``allegedly.'' I am 
going to put allegedly ahead of the things I say about this individual, 
understanding I don't believe he has been convicted at this point. He 
is innocent until proven guilty, but these are the news reports that I 
am referencing.
  He was arrested in April 2006 for other crimes. He is an illegal 
immigrant. He could have been deported back to his home country. He 
could have been incarcerated for the other violations he had, but he 
was released back into the community, again because of a sanctuary 
policy, and again this is Denver, the suburbs of Denver.
  So we have Jose Luis Rubi-Nava of Glendale, Colorado, who is charged 
with one of the most horrendous crimes that I have heard about in my 
years in dealing with these things, and that is the dragging death of a 
female whom we believe was perhaps his common-law wife, a live-in, or a 
romantic friend whom he allegedly tied a rope around her neck and drug 
her behind the car for over a mile and left her body about 20 feet 
outside a driveway in a suburban area, in a suburb of Denver.
  In reading the report, the gory streaks on the street were more than 
a mile long and they had to wash the streets to clean things up after 
the perpetration of this horrible crime allegedly committed by Rubi-
Nava.

                              {time}  2340

  This crime is just among the most horrible things that I have ever 
heard, and yet the Denver police persist. They buried one of their own, 
Donnie Young. The mayor's sanctuary policy is what they have to live by 
I recognize. I am not hearing from the police department that we should 
stop all of these sanctuary policies. Instead, I am hearing the police 
chiefs say we take care of our own; we enforce the law.
  But I hear things like statements made in this case, Denver police 
have no reason to believe someone is in the country illegally; 
therefore, they do not contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement 
agents. If they stop somebody, and any common-sense person, anyone with 
half a brain, could figure out that they had an illegal immigrant on 
their hands because of the identification, because of maybe a Mexican 
driver's license, maybe because of a matricula consular card, which is 
almost proof positive of unlawful presence in the United States. There 
is no reason to have a matricula consular card unless you are here 
illegally, Mr. Speaker.
  No, the Denver police would argue we have no reason to believe he is 
here illegally, and therefore, we cannot take action; therefore, we 
will release an individual back on the streets again and hope he does 
not drag somebody to death or shoot somebody in the back or run over 
them as a drunken driver.
  This kind of tragedy, this kind of evil, Mr. Speaker, has got to be 
stopped. I have laid out just three cases, and I have discussed perhaps 
about 17 murder victims in these three cases. That average, I do not 
know if it is high or low across the perpetrators of capital crime.
  Mr. Speaker, I can tell you that if you are the family members of any 
of those victims, you are not thinking in terms of numbers or whether 
it is a high or a low number of people that were killed. You are 
thinking in terms of your loved one that you have lost, that 
devastating, wrenching that a family goes through and a that grief that 
goes on for a lifetime, that hole that is there for a lifetime, the 
hole that I talked about in the family of Donnie Young, that hole 
multiplied by thousands in this country because we do not have the will 
to enforce our immigration laws, because we do not have the will 
because we have people that see the massive numbers of low-income, 
cheap wages as a political power base. On the other side of that, we 
have people that are making a lot of money off of cheep labor, and they 
believe they have a right.
  So, therefore, Mr. Speaker, I will continue this discussion in future 
evenings, and I appreciate the privilege to address you on the floor of 
the United States House of Representatives.

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