[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 62 (Monday, April 27, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H4754-H4755]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          BORDER WAR CONTINUES

  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, I bring you news from the second 
front, and that's the border war that the United States has on the 
border with Mexico down in the southern part of the United States.
  I had the opportunity for the last couple of weekends to spend some 
time with our Texas border sheriffs and the Air National Guard. In 
fact, I got to fly with the Texas Air National Guard and their 
helicopters on a mission a couple of weeks ago, and I want to give my 
compliments and thanks to Lieutenant Colonel Drew Daugherty, Major Bill 
Taylor, and others yet to be named whose identities should remain 
confidential.
  In any event, we had the opportunity to fly up and down the Rio 
Grande River at dusk and then at dark to see what has taken place on 
that border with Mexico. We saw a couple of incidents where individuals 
had crossed into the United States. They were later apprehended by the 
Border Patrol. We saw one incident where there was obviously a 
smuggling operation getting ready to take place on the Mexican side of 
the river, where we could see from the American side a drug cartel 
apparently, in my opinion, was loading up duffel bags so that they 
could move those into the United States. That information was given to 
the Border Patrol, and I suspect that the Border Patrol apprehended 
those individuals when they came across the United States. These low-
altitude helicopters are very important in the fight against the drug 
cartels that come into the United States.
  There are some issues, however. The Air National Guard, like the 
National Guard, does not have enough equipment. For this massive 1,800-
mile border here in Texas, there are only four helicopters that the Air 
National Guard has. And when something else occurs in the State like a 
hurricane or like a fire, those helicopters are pulled off surveillance 
and they're taken somewhere else in the State.
  So the first issue is that we as a Nation should support the National 
Guard and the Air National Guard in their work with the border sheriffs 
and with the Border Patrol, the ATF, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and 
anyone else in the Federal Government that's working to protect the 
dignities of our borders.
  As I mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity also to be with our 
Texas

[[Page H4755]]

sheriffs. There are 16 counties on the Texas-Mexico border. All 16 of 
those sheriffs plus four other sheriffs are in what is called the Texas 
Border Sheriffs Coalition. And I talked to those individuals, 
specifically Sheriff Cuellar, who is the brother of our own Henry 
Cuellar from Laredo. He's the sheriff of Webb County. Sheriff Sigi 
Gonzalez from Zapata County, Sheriff Arvin West from Hudspeth County, 
and Sheriff Oscar Carrillo from Culberson County. And all of those 
individuals said basically the same thing, that they're concerned about 
what they call the ``cross-border travelers'' that come into the United 
States and commit crimes in the United States.
  We hear a lot, Mr. Speaker, from all different sources about the 
crimes in Mexico coming into the United States. We have some that say 
they do occur. We have others that say, no, it's not really a problem 
over here. It's difficult to find out exactly what the truth is. So I 
asked the sheriffs of these counties who are responsible for the safety 
of their own community. These sheriffs patrol massive amounts of land, 
and I contacted them and asked them this question: How many people in 
your county jail are foreign nationals that are in jail charged with a 
crime in the United States, such as a misdemeanor or a felony, not 
foreign nationals who are in jail just on immigration violations? And 
it didn't make any difference what country they were from, but that was 
the question that I posed to these border sheriffs. And I will give you 
some of the statistics, Mr. Speaker, tonight.
  In El Paso County, one of the largest counties on the Texas-Mexico 
border, the sheriff's department there said about 18 percent of the 
people in the county jail are foreign nationals. Hudspeth County right 
next door, which is a massive county that has really not enough 
sheriff's deputies, the sheriff told me personally that about 90 
percent of the people in his county jail are foreign nationals charged 
with crimes in the United States. A massive amount of individuals.
  Next door in Culberson County, it was about 22 percent. The four 
counties in the middle, Jeff Davis, Presidio, Brewster, and Terrell 
County, the statistics were not, shall I say, as accurate as the 
sheriffs wanted to give me; so I'm not going to give that information 
because I'm not sure about the exact percentage.
  But if we move on down the Rio Grande River, and, of course, this is 
Mexico to the south and this is the rest of Texas up here, just going 
down the river, we have Val Verde County and about 39 percent of the 
people are foreign nationals. In Kinney County 71 percent of the people 
in the county jail are foreign nationals; Maverick County, 65 percent; 
Dimmit County, 45 percent; Webb County, that's where Laredo is, about 
45 percent are from foreign countries; Zapata County, about 65 percent.
  And moving on down the Rio Grande River to the Gulf of Mexico here, 
Starr County, 53 percent; Hidalgo County, 23 percent; and then Cameron 
County, where Brownsville matches or comes across from the river from 
Matamoros, about 28 percent.
  So, Mr. Speaker, you can make statistics prove whatever you want them 
to prove, but it shows that people from foreign countries cross the Rio 
Grande River and come into the United States and commit crimes. These 
people need to be held accountable for that, and the way to do that is 
to secure our borders by using the National Guard, the Border Patrol, 
the sheriffs, the sheriff's deputies, and all the Federal agencies 
because the first duty of government is to protect our Nation.
  And that's just the way it is.

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