[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

[[Page S5230]]

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.

                          ____________________