[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 138 (Tuesday, September 29, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H10044]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              BORDER SECURITY IS A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE

  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, there are still terrorists plotting 
to attack this Nation of ours. Just last week the FBI arrested a 
terrorist in Dallas, Texas. He drove up to the 60-story Fountain Place 
glass office building in downtown Dallas. He thought he had made a car 
bomb and had it all rigged up to blow up the building with the people 
inside. Media reports say that this Jordanian that was in the United 
States was illegally in this country.
  Law enforcement was on the job, however. The FBI had undercover 
agents posing as members of an al Qaeda sleeper cell, and they secretly 
supplied the terrorist with a dud bomb. But he didn't know that. The 
terrorist parked his dud bomb car in the parking garage, walked a few 
blocks away, dialed the cell phone number he thought would set the 
explosion off. It didn't work, and he was immediately arrested. That's 
good news for the people that were in that 60-story building in Dallas, 
Texas.
  Over the past 2 weeks, terrorists have been arrested in Dallas, 
Illinois, New York, and Denver. The threats to the United States from 
jihadists have not stopped.
  One way people who want to harm us get here is simply crossing our 
porous borders, especially the southern border. Now Border Patrol 
reports that nearly 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is not under 
effective control. The Department of Justice admits that vast stretches 
of the border are just easily breached. The Government Accountability 
Office says that three terrorists have been caught at the border; 530 
aliens from terrorist countries were stopped at Border Patrol 
checkpoints just last year. And that's at a checkpoint. What about the 
hundreds who get through our borders between the checkpoints?
  Our government's response to all of this is to decrease the number of 
Border Patrol agents at our southern border. Beginning in 3 days, 
they're pulling hundreds of agents off the Southern border. Does this 
make sense to anyone?
  Each year the Border Patrol sets a goal for ``border miles under 
effective control.'' ``Effective control'' means, in their jargon, when 
the Border Patrol detects somebody crossing, they expect to catch them.
  Homeland Security says the Border Patrol's goal last year was to have 
only 815 miles of the 8,600 miles of border under ``effective 
control.'' That's on both the southern and the northern border. Next 
year the goal is exactly the same: 815 miles under ``effective 
control.'' That means Homeland Security is not planning to secure one 
additional mile of either border next year, not one. And, of course, 
that's good news to people who want to cross illegally into the United 
States and do us harm.
  The southern border is nearly 2,000 miles long. Yet less than 700 
miles are what Homeland Security calls secured. Over 1,200 miles are 
not effectively under control, they say. And their media border guy, 
Lloyd Easterling, said the Border Patrol could protect the Mexican 
border with fewer agents. He may be the only person in America that 
feels that way. He said local police and sheriffs departments were on 
the job, and they are. But they're overworked, and they're overwhelmed 
with crime crossing into the United States. They don't have nearly 
enough officers, and they don't have the money to hire more personnel.
  It's the job of the Federal Government to protect our borders. I've 
been down to the Texas-Mexico border numerous times, and it's no longer 
a friendly, safe place to be. There are parts of the South Texas border 
that are so remote that people just walk across every day. We do not 
know who these people are. We don't know their intentions. And we don't 
know what they're bringing over into the United States. Not everyone 
coming into the United States illegally is looking for work.
  Instead of decreasing the number of Border Patrol agents, it needs to 
be increased, and we need to send the National Guard to the border as 
well. We should also move our military training exercises and 
operations to the southern border.
  Border security is a national security issue, and it's the number one 
duty of government: national security.

                              {time}  1930

  The American people are asking, Why don't we expect and make the 
government secure our borders? That is a good question. This question 
has been asked for years, but yet we still have the same results: 
porous borders. The greatest Nation on Earth secures the borders of 
other nations but refuses to secure our own border, and the question is 
why.
  And that's just the way it is.

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