[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 25, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H3793-H3794]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      SECURING THE SOUTHERN BORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity of 
following my good friend from Florida in his wonderful address to the 
House. I wish to talk about one particular issue.
  There was a newspaper article that came out today that said that 
President Obama is scheduled to send 1,200 troops to the Arizona-Mexico 
border. If indeed that report is accurate, I commend him for that type 
of activity, because his goal is to try to stop three of the most 
heinous organizations that are entering this country through public 
lands on the southern border: Illegal drug traffickers; illegal human 
traffickers and all the violence, especially against women, that they 
present; and the potential terrorists coming into those areas.
  The escalating violence on the southern border is of unprecedented 
proportion. Unfortunately, the success of stabilizing that border is 
not in the number of bodies that we send down there, but the ability of 
those bodies to have

[[Page H3794]]

full access to the border region. Unfortunately, the land manager 
policies that we have on our southern borders allow the criminal 
element unfettered access but prohibit the Border Patrol from going 
into those exact same areas.
  The traffic barriers that are put up in this picture on Federal lands 
in the south are not border barricades to stop illegals coming in from 
Mexico, or drug cartels, or human traffickers. They are to stop the 
Border Patrol from going into Federal lands on our southern border. The 
end result of this activity of all these drug traffickers, the human 
traffickers coming in, is the massive amount of environmental damage 
that is done.
  If I could give a quote from a 2007 article in the Tucson Weekly 
dealing with Ironwood National Monument talking about these smugglers 
that are coming in and their vehicles, mostly stolen from Phoenix: They 
often travel at night without headlights, with tape over the brake 
lights. They have been clocked tearing through the monument's dirt 
roads at 89 miles an hour, endangering the lives of residents and 
visitors alike. And it also ensures that many of these load vehicles 
never make it out of the monument, for they smash into trees and run 
into ditches. The BLM has towed 300 vehicles a year out of this one 
monument since the year 2000.
  These loaded vehicles, as well as the constant foot traffic, destroy 
habitat and threaten cultural sites and endangered species.

                              {time}  1845

  The trash that is left behind, this is from Ironwood, requires pickup 
crews to have biohazard training and armed guards watching them as they 
do their work. They have even attacked the cacti in the area, simply 
cutting it down, leaving it there across roads to create a barrier so 
they can stop park visitors and there either rob them or steal their 
autos at the same time. This also destroys the natural environment that 
happens to be there.
  This is not just taking place in the South, I want to emphasize, 
though. It is also taking place in the North. Although 40 percent of 
the land on our southern border between California and El Paso is owned 
by the Federal Government, we have the same situation on our northern 
borders, with over 1,000 miles of land, 13 States that intersect 12 
national parks, four Indian reservations; and the exact same problem 
exists on our northern border.
  In a letter to House Republicans, Homeland Security Secretary 
Napolitano talked about Border Patrol issues in the Spokane sector up 
in Washington. She wrote, the sector is currently working with Interior 
and Forest Service regarding Endangered Species Act issues related to 
grizzly bears and road use. Government biologists claim agents in 
vehicles on some roads are detrimental to bears. The sector, however, 
must occasionally have some motorized presence in those areas, and a 
related important issue is retaining access to critical areas. The 
sector must maintain the ability to respond via a motor vehicle when 
required.
  The importance of this?
  Well, the guy who was charged in the 1997 plot to bomb New York 
City's subway system crossed illegally across our northern border into 
Washington.
  In 2005, a 360-foot drug smuggling tunnel on private land was also 
found going from Canada to Washington. This illustrates how much effort 
smugglers are willing to do to try to attempt to come into this 
country, not just in the north, but also in the south.
  We had a testimony today in Resources where some people in the Park 
Service said, well, if there are exigent circumstances, obviously we 
make allowances for the Border Patrol to go in there. The problem, 
though, is definition of that term. Interior defines that term as a 
life and death situation. Homeland Security defines it as when there is 
evidence of a crossing. Those definitions are in conflict.
  Until the Department of the Interior and National Park Service rules 
are changed in both the North and the South along our borders and allow 
access to Federal Border Patrol and Federal employees, there is no 
amount of numbers that's going to make a difference. Instead, we simply 
have the worst of both worlds on both borders.

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