[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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