[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 92 (Thursday, June 5, 2008)]
[House]
[Page H5022]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       NEWS FROM THE SECOND FRONT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Madam Speaker, I bring you news from the second front. The 
second front, of course, is the border we have, the southern border, 
where there is a war going on. It's a border war between the United 
States and those people who wish to enter the United States illegally.
  During my travels to the Texas/Mexico border and, really, the 
southern border with Mexico, I've traveled all the way from San Diego 
to Brownsville, Texas meeting with the various law enforcement 
officers. Of course I've met with the Border Patrol, but more recently 
I've met with the sheriffs along the Texas/Mexico border.
  Let me make it clear. The Border Patrol does as good a job as we will 
let them do. They patrol the first 25 miles inland into the United 
States. But that's all they patrol. And if an illegal individual, no 
matter who they are, comes into the United States and gets past that 
25-mile marker, it's up to somebody else to patrol that area. And much 
of that time it's left up to the sheriffs throughout the States of 
Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.
  The sheriffs patrol the entire county. And let me give you an 
example. When a crime is committed in a county, a person calls 911, and 
911 transfers them to the Sheriff's Department, not to the Border 
Patrol, because it's not important at the time where that crime or 
where that criminal came from.
  And many times those criminals are cross-border criminals. They come 
into the United States from all over the world to commit crimes and 
then flee back across the southern border. And it's up to the sheriffs 
to protect the citizens of those counties.
  Just to give you an example of a couple of counties, I've visited 
with Sheriff Arvin West of Hudspeth County. That's way over here in 
West Texas. That's a county that's the size of Delaware. And Sheriff 
West, like most of the 16 border sheriffs along the Texas/Mexico 
border, they look like sheriffs from Texas, they act like sheriffs from 
Texas. But, to a person, they are relentless in protecting their 
communities from criminal conduct.
  And much of that conduct is the result of the failure of the United 
States of America to protect the border from people coming into the 
United States without permission. It is the duty, the first duty of 
government, to protect us from invasion by any source and by any means, 
and that includes anyone that comes into this country without 
permission.
  Most recently, I've gone all the way to the other end of Texas, down 
to Cameron County, Texas where Brownsville is. It's a unique county 
because most of that county borders water, either the Rio Grande River 
or the Gulf of Mexico. And I've watched, and I went down with Sheriff 
Omar Lucio and some of his deputies who also are a relentless bunch of 
Texas deputy sheriffs trying to protect the border.
  He, like Arvin West on the other side don't have a big budget for 
vehicles. So the way they get vehicles, Madam Speaker, is they have to 
confiscate the drug dealers' vehicles, those SUVs. And then once those 
are confiscated, they use those because they don't have enough money to 
fund their own transportation on the border.
  As Sheriff Lucio said, the drug dealers, the drug cartels outman 
them, they outspend them, and they outgun them. That's because they 
have more money than we have on this side of the border.
  And to give you an example of how the drug cartels work, and how it 
is very difficult for the sheriffs and the Border Patrol to stop the 
invasion of the drugs, down here on the Texas/Mexico border, the Rio 
Grande River is about as wide as this House of Representatives. And 
planes fly in from Mexico. They fly out into the Gulf of Mexico, come 
straight in across the Gulf of Mexico and the border of the United 
States, and they drop their cocaine, marijuana, and then other drug 
mules pick that up and move that throughout the United States on these 
interstates that are depicted on this map.
  So it's important that we give the border sheriffs the resources that 
they need. And part of that can come from the Merida Initiative. The 
administration has offered and is promoting the idea of sending $1.4 
billion in equipment and training to the other side of the border, to 
the Mexican side to fight the drug cartels.
  Good intentioned, but in all due fairness, the history of Mexico 
along the border is not good. There is corruption, and many of the 
military and the police have started working with the drug cartels, 
some of whom have been trained in the United States have gone over to 
the other side. Maybe that money would be better spent if we left it on 
our side of the border and gave that money to the sheriffs to patrol 
this entire area.
  We should give the sheriffs surplus military vehicles that have come 
back from Iraq and let them patrol all this area, because you cannot 
patrol this part of Texas with a Prius. We have to use some type of SUV 
or pickup truck. And it's important that we do this. The number one 
duty of government is public safety.
  Madam Speaker, June 6, 1944, the anniversary is tomorrow. We sent 
thousands of Americans over the lands and over the seas to protect the 
borders of countries that had been invaded. France, Belgium, 
Czechoslovakia and other nations, and it's the duty of our country to 
protect us from the invasion coming south of the border.
  We should send the military to the southern portion of our border and 
have the moral will to stop the invasion into the United States.
  And that's just the way it is.

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