[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 48 (Wednesday, March 26, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H2649]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
                            BORDER SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. O'Rourke) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. O'ROURKE. Madam Speaker, I rise today to introduce the bipartisan 
Border Enforcement Accountability, Oversight, and Community Engagement 
Act with my friend from across the aisle, Congressman Steve Pearce. 
This is a policy that will disproportionately impact the border and one 
that is humane, fiscally responsible, and rational. It is also a bill 
that reflects the best values, experiences, and expertise of the people 
who live along the border. And it is, in fact, written by people who 
live on and represent border communities.
  Madam Speaker, today we spend $18 billion a year on border security 
and immigration enforcement. That is twice what we were spending just 
10 years ago. We have a surge in border security, a surge in border 
personnel where we have seen a doubling of the size of the Border 
Patrol from just 10,000 10 years ago to more than 20,000 today. But 
this surge in resources and personnel and enforcement has not been 
accompanied by an adequate regime of oversight, accountability, or 
transparency.
  Tens of millions of our fellow Americans live along our borders with 
Canada and Mexico, and millions more cross them on a regular basis. In 
the community I represent, El Paso, Texas, we have 22 million border 
crossings a year; 99-plus percent are legal with people who are 
crossing for legitimate purposes with all of the appropriate travel 
documents. But when you combine the millions of people who live and 
cross our borders with this unprecedented surge of resources and law 
enforcement without the necessary oversight or accountability or 
transparency, this will lead to predictable abuses of power that we 
have seen not just at the borders themselves but at interior 
checkpoints that are up to 100 miles into the interior of the United 
States: detentions, interrogations, and retention of personal property, 
all without probable cause.
  While the vast majority of our border protection agents and our CBP 
officers are professional, and all of them face very difficult 
challenges in their job in terms of the level of vigilance they must 
maintain, the territory through which they must patrol, the 
unpredictable threats they must guard against, our office hears on a 
day-to-day basis from constituents who are harassed and hassled or 
otherwise treated with less than the appropriate dignity or respect. 
But there is no clear process that exists for these individuals to 
resolve their complaints. I will give you two examples, one from the 
northern border and one from the southern border.
  Pascal Abidor, an Islamic studies Ph.D. student and one of our fellow 
U.S. citizens, was crossing the Canadian border on an Amtrak train when 
he was questioned by CBP officers. He was taken off the train in 
handcuffs and held in a cell for several hours before being released 
without charge. His laptop was confiscated and held for 11 days 
following his detention during which time his private messages and 
photos were reviewed by CBP officers.
  We have a case, unfortunately, in the community I represent, a woman 
who has not released her name but a fellow U.S. citizen who lives in 
New Mexico who was crossing into the U.S. from Mexico. She was 
suspected of carrying drugs. She was detained, frisked, strip searched, 
and taken to a hospital. There she was invasively searched, X-rayed, 
and made to perform a bowel movement against her will by doctors at the 
request of CBP officers looking for drugs. At no time was she read her 
rights or given access to an attorney because even at the hospital, 
miles away from the physical border, Customs and Border Protection 
maintains that they are still in the process of a border interrogation. 
No traces of illegal drugs were found, and she was billed $5,000 for 
the exams.
  While stories like these are exceptional, they should never happen. 
As a result of a more militarized border, we are also seeing migrants 
who are pushed away from community ports of entry into harsher and more 
dangerous terrain, leading to a jump in the number of deaths. Two years 
ago, we saw the second-highest number of migrant crossing deaths on 
record, even though we saw the lowest number of crossing attempts 
across our southern border. We have had over 5,500 migrants die in the 
attempt to cross into the United States over the last 15 years.
  It is not just the individuals who have been victims of unfounded 
searches and seizures or who have perished in the desert who are failed 
by our current border policy. The Border Patrol agents and CBP officers 
who perform these toughest jobs in the Federal Government do not always 
receive the training or support they need to be safe in the field or to 
do their jobs effectively.
  For the taxpayers who deserve to have their tax dollars spent 
responsibly, secrecy and lack of transparency has prevented a sober 
accounting of whether the $18 billion a year that we are spending on 
the border is money well spent. Our bill addresses these issues in five 
concrete ways:
  First, robust oversight of all border security functions;
  Second, a transparent and timely complaint process that is 
independent of the existing chain of command;
  Third, increased and improved training resources for our agents and 
officers;
  Fourth, engagement between CBP and border communities;
  Fifth, new transparency measures.
  So I urge my colleagues to join me in a humane, rational, and 
fiscally responsibility approach to the border.

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