Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 94 (Tuesday, June 22, 2010)

[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 22, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5227-S5230]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, there has been a lot of conversation about
the issue of illegal immigration and the results of different meetings.
I

[[Page S5228]]

know my colleague from Arizona wishes to discuss that aspect of the
issue, but I take to the floor with my friend and leader from Arizona
to discuss the overall issue of immigration in light of a meeting and a
trip he and I had to the border on Saturday, where we visited with
ranchers, with citizens, with Border Patrol, and where we had a
thorough trip throughout the area. So we come to the floor to share our
conclusions and concerns with our colleagues.
Let me begin by saying that unfortunately--or fortunately--the head
of the Customs and Border Protection recently said that parts of
Arizona were like a ``third country.'' You know, in some respects--in
some respects--he may have been correct. Let me quote him. This is
David Aguilar, the Acting Deputy Commissioner of U.S. Customs and
Border Protection. He was quoted in the Arizona Republic as saying:

the border is not a fence or a line in the dirt but a broadly
complex corridor. It is . . . a third country that joins
Mexico and the United States.

A third country that joins Mexico and the United States is obviously
not as secure as the United States of America. If my colleagues will
look at this map here and see this area here, this is the sign that is
posted as far away as 50 miles from the Arizona-Mexico border.

Danger. Public Warning. Travel Not Recommended. Active Drug
and Human Smuggling Area. Visitors May Encounter Armed
Criminals and Smuggling Vehicles Traveling at High Rates of
Speed. Stay Away From Trash, Clothing, Backpacks and
Abandoned Vehicles. If You See Suspicious Activity, Do Not
Confront. Move Away and Call 911. BLM Encourages Visitors to
Use Public Lands North of Interstate 8.

North of Interstate 8 is the area north of this shaded area. In other
words, visitors are encouraged not to go south of the interstate, which
is a huge part of the State of Arizona. That is the posted sign put up
by the Federal Government.
Then the Secretary of Homeland Security says, ``The border is secure
as ever.'' If the border is as secure as ever, then you have to draw
the conclusion that it isn't secure, because otherwise you wouldn't
have to be posting signs such as this 50 miles north of the border, if
the border was secure. Our whole point is that we need to get the
border secure. We don't see the necessity in the United States of
America placing a sign such as that.
If we are doing fine on border security, why would it be necessary to
put up a sign such as that all the way up to the interstate?
Here is another sign from our Park Service in the Coronado National
Forest. This is in our national forest, from the Park Service.

Smuggling and/or Illegal Entry Is Common in This Area Due
to the Proximity of the International Border.

If we had a secure border, why would we have to put up signs such as
that? If we had made such great progress at that time the Secretary of
Homeland Security was trumpeting this, why in the world would we have
to put up signs such as that? That is the question.
I will let my colleague discuss the results of our visit, but I can
tell you that the citizens residing in the southern part of our State
do not feel secure. When you have 241,000 illegal immigrants
apprehended last year, that means that, depending on who you talk to,
it is nearly a million people apprehended in just that part of the
border. When you have 1.2 million pounds of marijuana intercepted in
the Tucson sector, it is not a secure border. When you have the
violence--the incredible violence--that continues to rise on the other
side of the border, you know it is just a matter of time before it
spills onto our side of the border.
Unfortunately, just south of the Arizona-Sonora border resides the
most vicious of all the drug cartels--the Sinaloa cartel--headed by
Juan ``El Chapo'' Guzman, who walked out of a Mexican prison a few
years ago and, unfortunately, this cartel has corrupted officials at
very high levels.
I report to my colleagues that the people living in the southern part
of the State of Arizona do not feel secure. They see signs such as this
one, which I mentioned; and they see the destruction of our wildlife
preserves; they see the in-home invasions. And, yes, our Border Patrol
and the men and women who are serving in it are doing a magnificent
job. We are proud of the job they are doing. But they do not have the
assets in order to complete the job of securing our border.
Senator Kyl and I have a 10-point plan that, if implemented, will do
the job.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the stories we heard were human tragedies,
and statistics don't tell the story adequately. Let me cite a few of
the statistics and then ask my colleague to recount some of the
heartrending stories that we heard from families in the area. When we
talk about that, he can point to the extreme southeast corner of the
State of Arizona, where we were, primarily, on Saturday, and where most
of these folks live on ranches--places that used to be very safe.
Today, these folks do not feel they can sleep at night or move around
without carrying weapons. They need to travel in pairs. This is the
area in which an extraordinarily difficult tragedy occurred when a
long-time resident of the area was slain, it is believed by one of the
drug cartels or other smugglers who frequent the area.
The human tragedy is the real heart of this, but let me cite some
statistics, because when the Secretary of Homeland Security says we are
secure as we have ever been, I think these statistics would at least
belie part of that claim.
About 50 percent of all illegal immigrants enter through Arizona. In
fact, they enter through essentially the eastern one-third of that
particular map. The number of illegal immigrants living in Arizona
increased over the last decade about twice, up to over 600,000 people.
It is estimated that about 12 percent of Arizona's workers are illegal
immigrants. According to the Maricopa County Attorney's office, about
12 percent of the county's population and about 22 percent of felony
crimes committed are committed by illegal immigrants.
My colleague has talked frequently about the fact that Phoenix, AZ,
our hometown, is the second largest kidnapping capital of the world,
and the largest in the United States--second in the world only to
Mexico City.
We can go on and on about the statistics. We have the highest rate of
property crime among the 50 States in the last year for which the FBI
reported the statistics in 2008. Our sheriffs and other law enforcement
tell us that between 15 and 20 percent of the individuals apprehended
at the border have criminal records or are wanted for crimes in the
United States.
Phoenix is a primary originating city, where drugs are brought from
the border and held in Phoenix and then transported to other cities. We
lead the Nation in marijuana seizures--50 percent. Heroin is
increasingly found in Arizona, and on and on and on.
The statistics don't lie, of course. But the real tragedy is the
human tragedy--the fear that people have; people who are fourth or
fifth generation ranch families in the area; people in town, who are
increasingly the subject of break-ins and property crimes and the like.
But none of this even begins to talk about what happens when the
people who are smuggled into the country, are held in drop houses--
generally in the Phoenix area--for transport either west to Los Angeles
or anywhere east in the country. They are essentially victimized by the
very people who smuggle them in and who demand ransom from their
families in Mexico, El Salvador, or Guatemala, or wherever they might
have come from. And until they pay that ransom, they are brutalized and
assaulted and become victims of crime themselves. And, of course, they
rarely report that crime.

So the human tragedy here is the real story. But it is important for
us to at least cite the statistics and show our colleagues the signs
that the U.S. Government itself feels constrained to post in order to
warn people to stay out of an area which encompasses probably about 20
percent of the State of Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. And may I also make the comment that my colleague from
Arizona points to about the terrible and unspeakable treatment that is
inflicted upon these individuals who are brought in by human smugglers.
Almost all are brought up by human smugglers. Where are the human
rights advocates and activists? Shouldn't they be standing up and
saying: You have to have a secure border so that these unspeakable
indignities--the

[[Page S5229]]

rape and ransom and all these things--will be stopped?
Secondly, I want to point out very quickly to my colleagues that in
recent years, 80 percent of the wildfires in our Coronado National
Forest have been human caused--75 percent of those are attributed to
undocumented aliens who fail to properly extinguish fires started to
signal for rides, cook food, or dry clothing. The Coronado National
Forest now has to send armed officers to clear wildland fire areas and
to provide security for firefighters. The Forest Service has reported
accounts of armed smugglers walking through the middle of active
firefighting operations. And now, in its fourth week today, as we
speak, the human-caused Horseshoe fire is burning in the Chiricahua
Mountains in the Coronado National Forest, 5 miles from the town of
Portal, AZ. It is the site of very heavy drug trafficking and border-
crossing activity.
With the few minutes we have remaining, I want to engage Senator Kyl
in a conversation about what we need to do and why we need to secure
the border first. There has been a lot of publicity in the last 24
hours about a conversation that Senator Kyl had with the President of
the United States. I was not there, but I was there a few weeks ago
when the President of the United States came and had lunch with
Republican Senators and gave a list of the issues that he was concerned
about, with immigration being one of the items he mentioned. So Senator
Kyl and I responded to the President of the United States.
It was made very clear to me in the conversation we had--and I am
sure our 39 other colleagues who were there will recall--that the
President basically conditioned his support for border security to
overall comprehensive immigration reform. We went back and forth. I
tried to explain to the President that we gave amnesty back in the
1980s. Somewhere around 3 million illegal immigrants were given
amnesty, but the promise was that we would secure the border.
Obviously, we didn't secure the border and we now have 12 million
people in the country. As Senator Kyl mentioned, there are some
hundreds of thousands in the State of Arizona illegally.
So our point is that even if we went through comprehensive
immigration reform, if we don't have a secure border, then some time
from now we will have another group of illegal immigrants we will have
to address, and so the issue argues for getting the border secured
first. It can be done in 1 or 2 years. It isn't that expensive, when
you look at the costs of a wildfire and all of the things, drugs and
everything else associated with it, not to mention a violation of human
rights.

There is a big stir about the conversation the President and Senator
Kyl had. It was clear to me in the conversation, in front of 39
Republican Senators, that the President of the United States said yes,
he would secure the border, but we had to have ``comprehensive
immigration reform.'' This is the difference between our position and
that of the President. We say secure the border, have the Governors of
the border States certify it is secure, and then we can certainly move
on. But the American people have to have the assurance that we are not
going to revisit this issue time after time. Every nation has the
obligation to secure its borders.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, when Senator McCain and I asked the acting
head of the Border Patrol in the area where we were on Saturday, what
do you need, he basically said, ``More of everything.'' He talked about
the need for 800 more Border Patrol agents. He talked about the need
for more surveillance--something Senator McCain has talked about a lot,
surveillance to cover a very big area where you are probably never
going to have enough personnel even if we bring in National Guard
troops. He welcomed the National Guard troops to the area. He said we
are going to have to have consequences for people crossing. I talked to
him about Operation Streamline. In the Yuma sector of the border, which
is on the western part of the Arizona border, the Yuma sector is very
close to being operationally clear of illegal immigration issues
because they have enough agents, they have enough fencing. By the way,
he talked about the need to repair and replace a lot of the fencing in
his sector. But they also have a policy that, instead of catch and
release, where the people are simply put on a bus and sent back to
Mexico, they actually are prosecuted and have to spend at least 2 weeks
in jail.
That is a huge deterrent. Because if you are a criminal, obviously
you don't want to be caught and go to jail, and if you are here to work
and send money back to your family, you are obviously not doing that if
you spend time in jail. He said there have to be consequences. We
believe the expenditure of somewhere between $1 billion and $3 billion
over the next couple of years could provide adequate resources--this is
our 10-point plan--adequate personnel, the fencing that is required,
the surveillance, the technology, and also the extra prosecutors,
courtroom, and detention spaces that would be necessary to provide the
deterrent or the consequences, as he put it. There is no doubt the
border can be secured. What we need is the will to do it.
Mr. McCAIN. What Senator Kyl and I are trying to report to our
colleagues is, No. 1, the border is not secure. The border is not
secure. No. 2, it can be secure. How could someone claim our border is
more secure than ever if the Federal Government has to put up that kind
of warning to American citizens on American soil? If nothing would
convince my colleagues that we need to do a lot more, it is the actions
of the Federal Government. That is not a private landowner who put up
that sign. That is the Bureau of Land Management. So have the
Department of Interior and other agencies.
The point is, we are trying to tell our colleagues it is not secure.
We can secure it. Our citizens deserve that.
But the second point we want to make as forcefully as possible is:
Let's get this border secure, which we can do, and then we can move
forward with comprehensive immigration reform and work together with
our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. But for us to go back to
our constituents and to the American people, and say: Hey, we moved
forward with this legislation, yet we still are having to put up signs
such as this, that people should avoid being in an active drug and
human smuggling area, in the United States of America, is not a
convincing argument that they are ``as secure'' as ever.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, might I inquire how much time remains on our
side?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There remains 6 minutes 18 seconds.
Mr. KYL. That is the time remaining on our side.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
Mr. KYL. Mr. President, what I wish to do is take about 3 more
minutes and then my colleague can close.
As he said, if you need a different kind of reason to want to secure
the border, then look at what is happening to our environment. I know
the Presiding Officer--and his father before him--is keen on protecting
the great national treasures of our country, our environment. Coming
from adjoining States, we share a lot of the same kind of country. The
area in the extreme southwestern part of his State and the extreme
southeastern part of our State is known for some of the best birding in
the world. The part of northern Mexico that borders our States provides
a sanctuary for birds that are not found anywhere else in the world.
This fire my colleague mentioned is burning right up to the creek which
is one of the watersheds that represents the prime area for these birds
to exist. Their habitat will be destroyed if we continue to have fires
set by illegal immigrants in the area that destroy the habitat.
If you look at the environment of the area from the air, you see that
there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of paths that are
worn in parts of the desert that are basically off limits to American
citizens and even to our law enforcement officials, but the smugglers
use these trails and they deposit their trash. Everybody knows that
once you have cut the desert, it takes hundreds--hundreds--of years for
that desert to respond. That is just one reason.
Obviously the human tragedy is the one that is of most concern. If my
colleagues would hear this one plaintive cry, we were told on numerous
occasions on Saturday: Please, go back to Washington and tell your
colleagues what it is like. Tell them how we are

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suffering. Tell them what we have to go through just to live here.
Can't our Government at least provide basic protection from crime?
These are members of the family of Robert Krantz, who was brutally
gunned down, and fellow ranchers in the area and other citizens who
live in the small communities there. They believe their government has
abandoned them. They look right into our eyes and say: What are you
going to do about it?
The best we can do is to tell you the fear they have, the suffering
they have gone through, the difficulty they have continuing to live in
an area, as I said, in which some of their families have lived for four
and five generations, to pass that message on to my colleagues and say:
OK, if it is the environment you care about, there is a reason to be
there; if it is crime, there is a huge reason to be there; if it is the
cost to the Federal and State government, we need to get hold of this
problem. But if you just care about the people who are there, we have
an obligation as their representatives to assure their protection, and
that is the message we are coming to the floor today to convey to our
colleagues. Please listen, if not to us, to our constituents, and
remember we all work for all of the people of the United States of
America. We are all Senators. So every one of us here has an obligation
to the folks--yes, in your State but also to the folks in our State--to
at least provide them the basic protection and give them a sense that
they do not live in a Third World country between the United States and
Mexico; that they are American citizens deserving of the protection of
the U.S. Government.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, there is no way I can elaborate on that
very strong statement, so I yield the remainder of our time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized.

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