[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 41 (Monday, March 9, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3090-H3091]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       BORDER WAR IN HUDSPETH COUNTY AND CULBERSON COUNTY, TEXAS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Madam Speaker, I bring you news from the second 
front. I'm talking about the front on the southern border of the United 
States with Mexico.
  This past weekend, I had the opportunity to spend some time with two 
of the sheriffs of the Sheriff's Border Coalition. There are 20 
counties in Texas that the sheriffs are members of the Border 
Coalition. And I spent time with two of those sheriffs, Sheriff Arvin 
West from Hudspeth County and Sheriff Oscar Carrillo of Culberson 
County. These two counties are directly east of El Paso County.
  The size of these two counties put together are the size of 
Connecticut and Rhode Island put together. They're massive counties and 
sparsely populated. The sheriff in each of these counties and his 
deputies know everybody that lives in the county, unlike the Border 
Patrol, who come and go from the community. They never really know the 
people or the culture, or what takes place in those counties. But the 
border sheriffs and their deputies, since most of them grew up there 
and were born there, they know the people who should be there and those 
people that are outside, as they call them, ``out-of-towners.''
  This past weekend, the Mexican Government sent 5,000 troops to 
Juarez, Mexico. That's the town across from El Paso. The reason is 
because of the drug cartels and the violence. Drug cartels are doing 
war with not only the United States, but they're doing war physically 
with the Mexican military. And it's so dangerous down there that Fort 
Bliss, which is across the river from Juarez, those soldiers that have 
been in Afghanistan and Iraq, are not permitted to go to Juarez. The 
State Department has warned Americans not to go to Juarez because of 
the danger of kidnappings and the violence that has occurred there all 
because of the drug cartels.
  But going back to the two counties of Culberson County and Hudspeth 
County, the question keeps being asked, ``Well, all that crime just 
stays there on the Mexican side, it never comes to the American side.'' 
Let me give you a statistic, Madam Speaker, how all the border sheriffs 
have to fight the drug epidemic and the crimes of violence and the 
property crimes in their county.
  Sheriff Arvin West, Hudspeth County, has two jails; one has 125 
prisoners, the other one has 545 prisoners. And on Saturday night, 
every person in both of those jails except one was illegally in the 
United States. There was one citizen. And these people are not charged 
with immigration violations. They hadn't just been picked up for 
illegally entering the country. They had been arrested for crimes 
against the Federal Government, felonies and misdemeanors against the 
State of Texas. He said if he didn't have to keep arresting folks 
illegally coming into the country and committing crimes in his county, 
he could close his jail down because there was only one citizen in the 
whole county or in the county jails. And he said seldom does he have 
any local folks put in that jail.
  So, yes, the border crime has come to the United States and will only 
get worse. But to show you how innovative these sheriffs are, these are 
poor counties, these are low-income counties where you've got 
hardworking people--sparsely populated, however--and so the sheriff 
have no budget for vehicles. Unlike the drug cartels that have Humvees, 
they have SUVs, pickup trucks, all of the things that they want. Border 
sheriffs--this sheriff especially--has no budget in the county for 
vehicles, so he has to confiscate drug vehicles--when he captures the 
bad guys with drugs--and then he uses those vehicles after they have 
been seized for his deputies. He has 20 vehicles that he uses for his 
17 deputies, and he has two or three of these 18-wheelers.

                              {time}  1930

  Yes, he's captured an 18-wheeler that's seized by the good guys 
against the bad guys, and on all of these vehicles, he puts this little 
notice down here on the bottom. It's on the bottom of this cab. It says 
semi-truck, $80,000. The drugs were worth $40,000. The bad guy got 10 
years in the penitentiary, and the seizure of this vehicle is 
priceless. So that's how he runs his sheriff's department: with seized 
vehicles. I commend him for doing that.
  It's important that we understand that the drug smugglers have more 
vehicles, better vehicles, more money, more men, and better equipment. 
They use GPS tracking devices to keep up with their drug loads. As I 
mentioned, they use Humvees. We have occurrences of the Mexican 
military helping move the drugs into these counties. Of course, 
Homeland Security denied that occurred. They said that didn't happen. 
But they didn't understand that Arvin West, Sheriff West, had the whole 
Mexican infiltration into his county on videotape, and once he 
videotaped it and showed it to Homeland Security, they said, well, 
maybe they are intruding and helping the drug cartels.

[[Page H3091]]

  And these people don't make any money. The sheriff of Hudspeth County 
makes $39,000 a year. Sheriff Carrillo of Culberson County makes 
$32,000 a year, and their deputies make about $27,000 a year. And they 
are protecting us from the drug cartels moving into the country. A guy 
just bringing drugs into the United States is going to make up to 
$1,500 a load, making far more than our own border protectors.
  There are four commodities being traded on the border. Two are going 
north and two are going south. The two going north are people and 
drugs, and they're being worked together. In other words, the coyotes 
work with the drug cartels to smuggle people. The two commodities going 
south: guns and money, and that's what's being traded on the border 
with Mexico.
  It's important, Madam Speaker, that we provide our border protectors 
with the Humvees they need. We need to give them better equipment, and 
we need to put troops on the border because the purpose of government 
is to protect the people.
  And that's just the way it is.

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