[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 45 (Monday, March 16, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3416-H3417]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CRIME BY FOREIGN NATIONALS

  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. Mr. Speaker, the crime committed in the United 
States by foreign nationals is hard to determine. The statistics are 
all over the map. But let me give you some tonight.
  The 9/11 Families For a Secure America say that 32 percent of all 
people incarcerated in the United States are in the United States 
illegally.
  Recently, I had the opportunity to go to south Texas to visit some of 
our sheriffs on the Texas-Mexico border. There are 16 counties in Texas 
that

[[Page H3417]]

border Mexico. Two of those are Culberson County, where Sheriff Oscar 
Carrillo is the sheriff. The other one is Hudspeth Country, where Arvin 
West is the sheriff. I was their guest over the weekend a couple of 
weeks ago.

                              {time}  1930

  And I was asking them this very question, ``How can we determine if 
the cross-border travelers are committing crime in the United States? 
Does it all stay in Mexico, where we know there is corruption and 
violent crime, or does it come over to the United States?''
  Well, Sheriff Arvin West gave me this statistic. There are two jails 
in Hudspeth County, one has a little over 100, and the other one is a 
private jail of over 500. He said most of the people in both of those 
jails are foreign nationals.
  And I asked him, ``Are these people charged with immigration 
violations or are they charged with other crimes?'' He said, ``No, they 
are charged with committing crimes in my county.'' He said, in fact, 
the jail that has a little over 100, every person in the jail is 
illegally in the United States except for one person. He said, ``If I 
didn't have cross-border travelers committing crime in my county, I 
wouldn't need a jail except for two people, one for a male and one for 
a female.''
  So we do understand that crime is coming into the United States from 
cross-border travelers because the United States does not enforce the 
rule of law on the Texas-Mexico border or the southern border of the 
United States.
  The Justice Department has said that 80 percent of the crime in the 
United States now is drug related or gang related. Newsweek recently 
reported that Phoenix, Arizona, is the No. 1 kidnapping capital in the 
United States, and most of it's related to the drug cartels and human 
trafficking.
  Recently Sheriff Arpaio from Maricopa County in Phoenix has been 
arresting folks that are illegally in the United States pursuant to a 
Federal program called the 287g Program. Federal funds go to local 
communities to train local peace officers to enforce immigration 
violations.
  It's been so successful that he's now being investigated by the 
Federal authorities, not for seeing how successful it is, but to see if 
he is following the rule of law, because some people who want open 
borders are complaining about his work. Of course, he says, he welcomes 
the investigation because maybe the Federal Government could do their 
job better. But it's important that agencies all work together. We are 
all in this together.
  Even my hometown in Houston is changing its attitude. For years the 
City of Houston has been accused by some of being a sanctuary city, 
like San Francisco. It claims it's not a sanctuary city, even though 
the Center For Immigration Studies says there are over 400,000 illegals 
in the City of Houston.
  So at least 400,000 doesn't make you a sanctuary city, but be that as 
it may, violence has occurred against our peace officers, Officer James 
Harris, Officer Andrew Winzer, Officer Florentino Garcia, Officer Guy 
Gaddis, Officer Rodney Johnson and Officer Gary Gryder, a personal 
friend of mine. You may not know those names, Mr. Speaker, but those 
are all Houston police officers killed by foreign nationals, most of 
them illegally in the country.
  As recently as March 5, Officer Richard Salter was trying to arrest 
an individual with an arrest warrant, and he was shot in the face by 
that individual. He was an individual from El Salvador who had been 
through the criminal justice system five times, ordered deported, and 
apparently he never went back to where he came from or he crossed the 
border again.
  It's important that foreign nationals understand that we will not 
tolerate crime committed by them in the United States. And it makes no 
difference whether those people are legally in the United States or 
illegally in the United States.
  You come to America, and you commit a crime, and you are a foreign 
national, those people need to be sent home first. We need to tell them 
to pack their toothbrush, you don't have a right to stay in this 
country. And our government, working with local authorities, ought to 
do everything it can to send those people back home.
  You don't have a right to come here and commit crime and stay here. 
And we should enforce the rule of law first with those foreign 
nationals that commit crime in the United States. After all, it is the 
duty of our government.
  The first duty of government is not building roads and bridges and 
naming a bunch of post offices. The first duty of government is to 
protect the country, protect the citizens that live here. And the 
government that we have, the United States of America, needs to enforce 
the rule of law in this country because that is the duty of government.
  And that's just the way it is.

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