[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 16417-16423]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


                          IMMIGRATION CONCERNS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon in order to bring to 
the attention of the body a serious, in fact I think an extremely 
dangerous, problem that the United States faces in the area of 
immigration and immigration reform and specifically the problems we 
face on our borders with people coming across this country without our 
permission, people we do not know, people we do not know why they are 
coming, we do not know who they are, we do not know what they are going 
to do here; and they are coming through in huge numbers.
  The face of illegal immigration in my district may be people wanting 
to do work in the entertainment industry, people wanting to do work in 
the landscaping area, people working in restaurants; but the face of 
illegal immigration on the borders is much uglier, much nastier.
  The face of illegal immigration on our borders is one of murder, one 
of drug smuggling, one of vandalism for all the communities along the 
border, and one of infiltration of people coming into this country for 
purposes to do us great harm. Most recently, an incident occurred in 
Arizona near the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument that I want to 
begin our discussion with today.
  The situation in that part of the country is actually incredible. I 
cannot think of a way to describe it except to say that we are under 
siege, that there is an invasion. Near the Tohono O'odham Indian 
Reservation in Arizona, we have about a 76-mile coterminous border with 
Mexico and this particular reservation.
  The Tohono O'odham are the second largest tribe in the United States, 
second only to the Navajo; and they have been living peacefully in this 
area for centuries. But in the last several months, things have gotten 
very, very bad in this particular area as a result

[[Page 16418]]

of the fact that there have been some efforts on the part of the INS, 
and also the Border Patrol, to strengthen our border security posts 
around Nogales and Tucson and San Diego. As a result, we have created 
sort of a funnel effect where 1,500 people a day are now coming across 
that 76-mile border, coming across illegally, through the Tohono 
O'odham Indian Reservation and up into Arizona, and, of course, 
spreading across the United States.
  These are not just people looking for a job. They are not just folks 
coming because they are seeking the American dream. These people, many 
of them are coming because they are transporting drugs, working for 
Mexican drug cartels. Many of them are coming for purposes, as I say, 
that have nothing to do with the benign or even, some might suggest, 
positive intent of seeking work in the United States.
  Just a few weeks ago, in this same area, we had a situation where two 
Mexicans had committed a series of murders in Mexico that were 
connected to drug activity. These people were evidently professional 
assassins. They killed four people in Mexico that were in a rival gang, 
in a rival drug cartel; and they were escaping into the United States 
where they were confronted by a member of the Border Patrol and a 
member of the Park Service, a park ranger.
  When they stepped out of their cars, when our folks stepped out of 
their cars to go and confront these people, they were met by two 
individuals who opened fire with automatic weapons; and one man, 
Christopher Eggle, was killed.
  A 28-year-old park ranger was killed. He was killed in the line of 
duty. He laid down his life in the defense of others, in the defense of 
this country, just exactly the same way men and women in Afghanistan, 
in the Gulf War, in wars throughout our history have done. Yet very 
little has been heard about his death here in this country, very little 
news has been made by this death, and I wonder why.
  Well, I am here today, along with my friend and colleague, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), who has in his district the 
parents of Mr. Eggle; and we are here today to make sure that people do 
hear about this event and that we do bring to the attention of the 
Nation and our colleagues the fact that people like Mr. Eggle are in 
fact putting their lives on the line on our borders; and they deserve 
every bit as much of our support and attention and concern as we 
approach 9-11 as all of the other folks who heroically defend America, 
whether they are the fire and police people in New York, or whether 
they are our troops that are perhaps being readied to go off to war in 
Iraq.

                              {time}  1345

  We need to bring Mr. Eggle and his comrades to the attention of our 
body.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) to 
also say a few words here in this regard.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding, and I 
think that over the last period of time my colleague has been heroic in 
his efforts to educate the Congress on the challenges that face our 
Nation as a result of the conditions on our border. The conditions as 
we view them, the face of illegal immigration is one thing. In West 
Michigan it is another when one actually takes a look at it from the 
border and it is a very different reality that Kris Eggle faced in 
August.
  Let me give a little bit of background about Kris. Kris was a 28-
year-old National Park Service ranger. He was assigned to the Organ 
Pipe Cactus National Monument at the time of his death. My colleague 
has given us a little bit of the details about that, but if we go back, 
Kris was one of the best of the best. He graduated as valedictorian of 
Cadillac High School in 1991. He was an accomplished cross-country 
runner at Cadillac High School. He went on to be a top cross-country 
runner at the University of Michigan, where he graduated with honors in 
1995.
  After the graduation he chose Government service as the field where 
he was going to commit his life to. He joined the National Park 
Service. He served at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, where 
he served as a ranger on both the North and South Manitou Island. He 
had been stationed in Arizona since 2000. That is a little bit of 
background about Kris Eggle.
  A little bit of background on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It 
is one of our finest national parks. It has over, I believe, 327,000 
visitors per year. It is just an awesome area that my colleague has 
visited on a number of occasions that we are trying to preserve. The 
disappointing thing is that over the last number of years as our border 
patrol has tried to control illegal immigration and illegal border 
crossings at the urban centers, what that has resulted in is that we 
have not stopped the illegal border crossings as we have just moved 
them from one part of the border to the other, and in this case we 
moved them to Kris.
  I met with some of his supervisors this morning who indicated that 
one of the reasons that these types of individuals were in the area, 
these types of hit men, is that individuals like Kris were maybe doing 
their job too well. Last year they seized close to 750,000 pounds of 
drugs in the park, and this is the reason that folks on the south side 
of the border were maybe behind in their drug payments and these types 
of things which got them in trouble. But folks like Kris were going 
about doing their job and going above and beyond doing their job. 
Kris's love was the environment, in making sure that Organ Pipe Cactus 
National Monument lived up to our expectations for what we want our 
national parks to be.
  As the border crossings and the illegal border crossings moved over 
to Organ Pipe, what he found was that he not only had to deal with 
327,000 legal visits to the park, he also had to deal with over 200,000 
illegal aliens.
  Let me read a little bit about what Michelle Malkin says about what 
happened here. She writes and she talks about why Kris did not get much 
attention, or his death, while other seemingly less important events 
get more focus in today's society. Whereas someone like Kris is a true 
hero, some others that maybe make the national media are not. Here is 
part of what she had written: ``The park where Kris had been stationed 
for 2 years, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona, 
is considered the most dangerous national park system in the Nation, 
according to a national survey conducted by the Fraternal Order of 
Police. It is a magnet for illegal aliens and Mexican smugglers; some 
200,000 illegal border-crossers and 700,000 pounds of drugs were 
intercepted at the park last year.
  ``Nonetheless, Eggle embraced his job. He was always cheerful, his 
co-workers said. A `model citizen.' A `quintessential American boy-
turned-ranger.' He baked chocolate chip cookies for fellow rangers and 
entertained them with songs while on duty. Eggle's father, Robert, 
said, `Kris was where he wanted to be, and he did what he wanted to 
do.' A native of Cadillac, Michigan, where he grew up on his family's 
130-year-old farm, Eggle was an Eagle Scout, a high school 
valedictorian, a devout Baptist, and a champion cross-country runner 
for the University of Michigan. Former coworkers called the fleet-
footed Eggle the `Coyote' in honor of his running prowess.
  ``On August 9, Eggle's speed and dedication may have cost him his 
life. He and three U.S. border patrol officers responded after Mexican 
police reported that two armed fugitives had fled across the border 
into the U.S. A border patrol helicopter gave chase and directed Eggle 
and the other officers to where three suspects had ditched their 
vehicle. The American officers pursued the fugitives on foot as they 
ran into nearby bushes. One of the Mexican nationals was caught; in the 
attempt to apprehend the other two, Eggle was ambushed and shot by one 
of the suspects with an AK-47.
  ``The gunfire hit Eggle below his bulletproof vest. He died at the 
scene before an emergency helicopter arrived. At the memorial service 
in tiny Ajo, Arizona, this week, Eggle's casket was draped with an 
American flag and topped with the Stetson hat he wore on the job.'' He 
was buried in his hometown in Cadillac, Michigan, following services 
there.

[[Page 16419]]

  Kris Eggle, after graduating, decided that he would serve the country 
that he loved. The folks that knew Kris said that he had one of the 
brightest futures possible at the National Park Service. The award that 
he is shown receiving here I believe was given to him in Arizona 
because where he earned the awards were during a training session, and 
rather than staying for the awards portion of the training session, he 
said ``I want to get back to Organ Pipe. I want to get back to my job. 
I want to get back to my coworkers. I want to get back and do the job 
that I have been hired to do.''
  Kris, like all other fellow employees, took an oath to swear his 
allegiance to this country. Kris did his job. He did it magnificently.
  The challenge that my colleague from Colorado and that Kris's parents 
have laid out to me is let us make sure that we give Kris's coworkers 
the resources, the protection, and whatever tools they need to minimize 
the risk that national park rangers take. They know the risks when they 
take the job. They are armed, they are given bullet-proof vests. But we 
need to make sure that we give them a job that minimizes that risk, 
that we really do have border security. I am sure my colleague may 
touch on that, but when we take a look at the issues that are 
associated with the border there, we recognize that we have given Kris 
and his coworkers a very, very tough and very, very difficult job. A 
small number of national park rangers supported and complemented with 
border patrol folks, but a small number of park rangers and 80 border 
patrol folks is a small number compared to 200,000 illegal aliens, many 
of whom are Mexican nationals who are coming to America, looking for a 
better life and really with no intent to do any harm or danger to our 
folks patrolling the border, but a small number of whom have used that 
border location and that border-crossing as a market of opportunity, 
coming across the border in SUVs, coming across the border heavily 
armed and with one intent, to get the drugs to market at whatever the 
cost. And if the costs are the lives of our national park rangers, our 
border patrol agents, or a gunfight with these individuals, those 
individuals are willing to take that risk and kill Americans for them 
to move their drugs into our cities, into our communities, into our 
schools, and to our kids.
  Kris was at the front line trying to make sure that that did not 
happen. To him we owe a great debt of gratitude, to his service. We 
extend our deepest sympathy to his family, his coworkers, and all that 
knew Kris, and I think that this Congress then also owes the family, 
the national park rangers, and American communities and schools and our 
children all over America the commitment that we will do what needs to 
be done on the border to ensure that these types of incidents hopefully 
will be eliminated or will be minimized. We know we can do it. The 
reason that there are fewer illegal border-crossings in the urban areas 
is that we put a focus and an emphasis on that. We now need to provide 
the border patrol and the national park service with the same resources 
that are essential to close and protect this section of the border as 
well as other sections of the border because as I talked with the 
rangers this morning, they recognize that if they close the border and 
are successful in getting the funding to make the border secure along 
Organ Pipe, that does not solve the problem. It may solve it for them, 
but they recognize that that is not enough because the land directly 
adjacent to Organ Pipe I believe is controlled by the Fish and Wildlife 
Service. So they do not want to put their folks at the Fish and 
Wildlife Service at risk just because they have gotten the resources to 
secure the border here.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for giving me time, 
for sharing this, and for the commitment that he made. He made the 
commitment to be in Arizona before this incident ever happened. He has 
been back in Washington showing us pictures of the border, describing 
the conditions, telling us what has been going on there. I believe he 
was at Organ Pipe just briefly or shortly before these tragic events of 
August 9, and he also took the time, the effort, and the energy that he 
attended the services back in Arizona for Kris, and I very much 
appreciate the gentleman's doing that and being a representative of 
this Congress to the National Park Service, to Kris's family, in 
demonstrating our concern and our commitment to them, and I can 
personally convey to him their appreciation for his being there and 
participating and leading these efforts to make sure that the risks of 
something like this happening in the future will be very, very much 
reduced.

                              {time}  1400

  I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo), 
very much.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I thank my dear friend and colleague, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra).
  This is something that, when I say it is a pleasure in terms of being 
able to represent this body, it is certainly not a pleasurable 
experience, but being able to represent us at the funeral of Kris 
Eggle, I was glad to be able to do that, because I wanted his parents 
to see that someone does know, someone does care; that the Congress of 
the United States, at least many Members of it, are well aware of the 
sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice that was given by their son, Kris, 
and by them giving their son in that regard.
  The statements that were made that day, it was an enormously 
emotional funeral, as Members can imagine, of a young man well loved by 
all of his colleagues. There must have been a couple of hundred people 
there, 90 percent of whom were members of the Border Patrol, members of 
the Park Service, Forest Service employees and customs agents, all of 
them comrades-in-arms with Kris, and all of them talking about him in 
the most loving and glowing terms, those that knew him personally.
  I remember his colleagues talking about how each day they would go 
out and he would be so enthusiastic about the job, about his 
responsibilities for the day. He would turn to his colleague and his 
co-worker and almost every day say something to the effect of, is there 
anything I can do for you today? That was one way of describing what 
Kris was like.
  I also remember that his supervisor, the head of the Park Service in 
that area, got up and said, this death cannot be in vain. We have to 
recognize that there are things that this country needs to do in order 
to assure that someone else's son or daughter does not face the same 
fate.
  We are at war on our borders. There is no other way of describing it. 
We ask men and women to go down there and put their lives on the line, 
just like we ask men and women to do it in the Armed Forces of the 
United States. But the difference with the war on our borders and 
perhaps the war that we are pressing, let us say, against terrorism is 
that I do not know if we have the will as a government to actually win 
that war.
  I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra).
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to just build off of that 
comment.
  Obviously, today is September 10. September 11 we will again 
remember, as we have for almost every day over the last year, the 
heroism of the firefighters and the emergency personnel in New York 
City; the same at the Pentagon; the folks on United Flight No. 93. They 
very much deserve that recognition, and I am pleased that we are able 
to do that. We recognize that we are now in a war on terrorism.
  But as we have noticed, during the month of August, I had the 
opportunity to travel to central Asia and met with our troops in 
Uzbekistan, met with our troops in Afghanistan, saw our troops on the 
U.S.S. George Washington, saw them in Bahrain. There are a whole lot of 
people who have their lives on the front line each and every day in 
central Asia. Then we have individuals like Kris, who have their lives 
on the line each and every day along our borders.
  America has so many people to be grateful for who are willing to make 
that sacrifice and that commitment to

[[Page 16420]]

our country. They have very, very many different faces. It is the 
responsibility of this Congress that in each of those wars that we are 
engaged in, whether it is the war on homeland security to make sure 
that we are safe in our homes and in our communities, and those are 
emergency first responders; whether it is the face of the American 
troops that have taken the war to the terrorists, they have their lives 
on the line; or whether it is the individuals like Kris, who maybe come 
into a war unexpectedly, who are going in and wanting to protect our 
national environmental treasures and are finding out that all of a 
sudden they are in the drug war, we need to remember each of these.
  It is a commitment and responsibility of Congress that in each of 
these situations where we ask our young men and women, and Kris was 
maybe one of the older ones. He was 28, and he would have been 29 on 
his parents' anniversary in the month of August. If we take a look at 
the young people on the U.S.S. George Washington, more than 5,000, and 
I call them kids, because the average age is 20 years old, and my 
oldest daughter is 20, we ask our young people, in many cases, to fight 
our wars.
  We need to make sure that if we are going to declare these kinds of 
wars, that we need to be serious about equipping them and giving them 
all of the resources that are necessary to fight the war effectively. 
We cannot have them go in without the proper resources, and I think 
this is an area where we need to take a look that says that we have 
declared a war on drugs, we have had it for a long time, but are we 
really properly equipping our borders to stop the flow of drugs into 
this country when through this 30-mile stretch of border there are, 
what is it, eight to 10 national park rangers there?
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I would tell the gentleman, it is nine 
rangers.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Nine rangers, along with some Border Patrol, who have 
pretty much single-handedly stopped over close to three-quarters of a 
million pounds of drugs, 700,000 to 750,000 pounds of drugs, in a 
single year.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, it is a fascinating 
thing, because I do not know if a lot of our colleagues, and I 
certainly do not believe a lot of the citizens of the United States, 
know the exact situation that we face on these borders, in our parks 
and in our national monuments.
  Not too long ago I went down to the Coronado National Forest, not too 
far from Organ Pipes. The Coronado is one of the oldest national 
forests in the land. In 1906 it was created, a beautiful, beautiful 
environment that is being completely despoiled by the same thing, by 
massive numbers of people coming across illegally.
  These people find that the terrain is rugged. They can hide more 
easily; and now actually we can fly over that and we can see where 
tracks have been worn into the land by so many people, by hundreds of 
thousands of people, so it looks actually like a spider web going out 
all over that particular forest area. Those tracks will not go away for 
many, many, many years.
  Then they make a track and they think that we monitor it, so they 
will move over a little bit and move over a little. They think we put 
sensors out, so it just spreads out like that.
  Trash, and it is the same thing in all our national parks in this 
area, the trash is enormous. The problem is with plastic water bottles 
strewn everywhere, hundreds of thousands, and clothing just tossed 
aside. They come through and they start warming fires in the night and 
walk away in the morning leaving them go.
  When we got back from the Coronado, we left on a Sunday morning, and 
by the time we had gotten back, when I got back home to Colorado, 
35,000 acres had been consumed in Coronado by one of these fires.
  I am told by these folks who have been fighting these incursions, I 
guess there is no other way to put it, for years, that we have always 
had a lot of people bringing drugs through in our southern and northern 
borders; and, by the way, it is not unique to the southern border, but 
before when they would confront them, by and large they would drop what 
they were carrying.
  They carry these 60- or 70-pound loads on their backs in these 
homemade backpacks, which, by the way, once they get to a part of the 
national park where another road has been cut in by their accomplices, 
a road used by trucks coming in to pick up the drugs, when they reach 
that, they unload the drugs and discard all of this backpacking 
material. They pile it up in huge, massive piles of this stuff all over 
the place.
  He said that before when they would confront them, they would simply 
drop it and run. But now they are not. Now they are fighting back. Now 
they are opening fire. They are preceded by a guy with an M-16 leading 
a bunch of people carrying the drugs, and he is followed by a guy with 
an M-16.
  Our park rangers, park rangers, for heaven's sakes, this is not 
really what they have been trained to deal with. Their responsibilities 
do not go to fighting drug cartels, but that is the position we have 
placed them in.
  To their credit, as my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. 
Hoekstra), has said, they have interdicted hundreds of thousands of 
pounds of illegal drugs over the course of just the last year. But it 
is getting rougher. It is getting tougher. It is getting meaner. The 
cartel members are actually holding hostage some of the family members 
of the people who are transporting the stuff for them, so unless they 
make it all the way across and to their appointed site where they dump 
it off to a truck, their family member in Mexico is killed.
  So that is why, that and other reasons, why we are now facing a 
different kind of threat down there.
  Besides that, we were told, there is an ever-increasing number of 
what they refer to as OTMs, other than Mexicans, coming across the 
border. Now we see what they call an alarming number of people coming 
through from China and from the Middle East, coming through these 
areas. For what purpose?
  What is our ability and desire to try to interdict it and try to stop 
it? If we do not intend to defend these borders, then we should not be 
putting people like Kris in harm's way.
  If it is not our intent to actually secure the border, and if that 
means putting the military in there to help Kris and his compatriots 
until we can stabilize the INS, until we can actually reform that 
organization and get the Border Patrol, and believe me, the folks on 
the line are doing a great job. These guys and the ladies down there 
who are Border Patrol agents, they are park rangers, they are Forest 
Service personnel, I take my hat off to them. It was my pleasure, as I 
say, to go down there and talk to them and see and visit them as often 
as I could during the break, both borders. But they need help. They 
cannot do this alone. We have asked them to try to hold back a flood, 
and we have given them a sieve.
  Unfortunately, this flood is getting more dangerous all the time. Not 
a month prior to this particular event, or no, I am sorry, it was May 
27, again, not far from where this happened, not far from Organ Pipes 
in a place called Papago Farms, a Border Patrol agent on patrol 
confronted a Mexican military vehicle in the United States, a Mexican 
HMMWV with several members of the Mexican military on board.
  When he confronted them, they got out. He decided that discretion was 
the better part of valor, since he was certainly outgunned and 
outmanned. When he was turning around to go get help, a shot rang out 
from the Mexicans. It went through his back window, hit the metal grate 
that separates him from the back part of his vehicle, and went out the 
right rear window.
  That was on May 27. We have had up to this point in time 127 
incursions of that nature since 1997, where Mexican military, Mexican 
federal police have come into the United States. Usually it is for the 
purpose of protecting a drug shipment. There is usually a large 
shipment coming through, so they will actually act as the protection 
for it, or they act as a diversionary tactic. They

[[Page 16421]]

come in over here, and we naturally send people to find out what this 
is all about when we have Mexican military coming in; and a drug 
shipment comes through where we have pulled our people away.
  This is what has been happening. Again, nobody has talked about it. 
An American, a person that is a member of our Border Patrol, is 
actually fired upon by another person who is a member of a foreign 
military service, and nothing is said or done around here, all because 
we are fearful of discussing this issue of immigration and immigration 
control; all because we are fearful of the politics of it.
  I will tell the Members, and I know the gentleman feels this way, 
too, this issue, it is our responsibility, even if it is to our 
political peril, it is our responsibility as Members of Congress of the 
United States to live up to the oath of office that says we are going 
to protect this country, the people and the property of this country, 
from all those who intend to do us harm.
  Part of that duty is to defend this border, or, as I say, to leave 
it. But we cannot continue in this halfway mode of creating a facade of 
protection, sending people down there like Kris, telling them to hold 
back that flood, but not really and truly doing what is necessary for 
fear that we would actually stop the flow of illegal immigrants into 
the country.
  There are all kinds of ramifications of that, political and economic. 
We do not want to deal with that, and we do not want to adjust our 
policies because we are afraid of the politics. I am not, and I know 
the gentleman is not, and I know there are other Members of this body 
who are not afraid to address this issue. There are hundreds of 
thousands of people like Kris who serve every day on that line who look 
to us for that kind of leadership and support. They see us as their 
only hope to ever get the job done.

                              {time}  1415

  And we have a duty to them to do everything we can. We ask them to do 
everything they can. We asked Kris Eggle to do everything he could do 
to protect that national monument, that national park; and he did 
everything that he could do. It is up to us to do everything that we 
can do in this body to make sure that his death was not in vain.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of talk around the 
country lately about leadership. In corporate America we have seen 
where, for some, leadership had evolved from serving others, serving 
those who had given you the opportunity to lead, serving and 
recognizing that with leadership came a certain responsibility, and for 
that limited number of corporate executives it had moved from serving 
others. Leadership now means what can I get out of it for myself? 
Leadership began to mean more about, what's in it for me, than what is 
in it for others?
  The gentleman is absolutely correct that for the folks that put their 
lives on the line each and every day, for them leadership is about 
service. Chris was doing this in service of his country. For our troops 
in central Asia, they are doing this in service to their country. For 
the firefighters and rescue workers in New York and at the Pentagon, 
they gave their lives because they recognize leadership and 
responsibility meant serving others and not serving myself. For the 
folks on United Flight 93, again, service meant, I am going to take the 
risk. I am in leadership. This is my opportunity to lead. And when 
leadership presented itself to those people on United 93, they went and 
they sacrificed their lives knowing that they would serve their 
country. That is exactly what Kris did.
  The story of the incident is that he never forgot the 
responsibilities of his job. When they got to the place where the road 
ended and the tracks went off the road of the folks that they were 
pursuing, Kris recognized that to follow those tracks would do more 
harm to the environment so he parked the truck. He said, we do not take 
trucks out there. And because of his experience in running, he went 
after them on foot and then was ambushed and that is how he lost his 
life. But he never thought about what was in it for him. He said, this 
is the job that I have agreed to do. I am here to serve my country. I 
am here because I love the National Park Service, and he ended up 
sacrificing his life.
  But the same thing that they have to do is that we have to recognize 
is that the individuals that we put on the front line as they have 
defined leadership to mean service, we need to view it the same way.
  Leadership now means not what is in this for me politically, what are 
the political costs and consequences, but it is how do we serve our 
constituents, how do we serve this country and how do we serve those we 
put on the front line? The way we serve those on the front line is to 
provide them with clarity of what we want them to do. I think they have 
that. At least in that 30-mile section they have clarity. They see it 
as our job to secure that border. That is what we thought borders were 
for.
  What maybe has not been so clear back to us here in Washington is 
taking the steps in leadership that will actually equip these 
individuals to do that job. Kris saw it. It was my duty to serve my 
country, protecting the borders and maintaining the integrity of the 
borders and stopping drugs from coming in here illegally and stopping 
others from coming in here illegally. That is my job. There is no lack 
of clarity there.
  The only lack of clarity that they may have within the National Park 
Service is if they are asking us to do all of this, why does the 
rhetoric out of Washington not always match what they are asking us to 
do. They may be a little confused about that. And then in some cases, 
and maybe too often, it is why have they not given us the resources to 
properly do our job? There is no question that for any sovereign nation 
protecting the borders and providing integrity to the borders is a key 
component to your sovereign nation and keeping your nation safe. That 
is a well established fact. That is one of things that governments do. 
We just need to make sure that the folks that we ask to do that, we 
recognize and give them the resources to make sure that they can do 
that job and do it very, very effectively.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, one of the ways in which this whole issue 
can be described includes a connection to the war on terrorism. Because 
it is not only the southern border where we see this kind of activity, 
but, as I say, I just returned a little bit ago from the northern 
border, a place near the Canadian border called Bonners Ferry, Idaho. 
And all of the activities up there of the border patrol, of the U.S. 
Forest Service, and in this case, there were 100 Marines that had been 
assigned the task of trying to determine whether they could interact 
with the border patrol and the U.S. Forest Service for the purpose of 
trying to defend one little chunk of border. Just see what we can do if 
we combine our efforts. One hundred Marines, 3 drones. They were using 
old UAVs, those unmanned aerial vehicles, flying along the border. It 
is the same ones, the first generation type we used in the first Gulf 
War, and a couple of radar towers. And, of course, what we saw was a 
large amount of drug activity, a large amount of people coming across 
that area carrying drugs.
  When I was up there I was told that there is a very large Muslim 
population in Calgary, Canada. Again, kind of surprising in a way. 
Almost 25,000 people, Muslims living there. They were connected, a 
large number of them are connected with the trade in the component 
parts of methamphetamines, shipping them into the United States through 
Canada. They took it down here, make the drugs, sell it, and the money 
goes back to the Muslims in Calgary to this group, the drug trade 
group, and they use the money to support terrorist activities all over 
the world.
  When we keep talking about this, about there being a war on our 
borders, it is quite literally a war. Again, something I think that so 
few of our colleagues even perhaps understand. They look at it again as 
just what they see

[[Page 16422]]

in their own districts. That is understandable. But when you get to the 
border, as we say, you see illegal immigration in the form of drug 
trafficking, drug running, illicit sex trade, human smuggling, economic 
crimes. These are all part of what is going on on the border.
  Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to say that it is a pleasure to be here 
with my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), to honor 
as little as we can here. As I said at Kris's funeral, when someone has 
given the full measure of devotion, what word can we possibly use to 
try and salve the wounds that are created by that event? There are few, 
if any, that we can utter that will give solace to his parents, give 
comfort to his friends, and rest to his soul. God is in charge of that, 
and we place his family, his friends, and all of the people who work 
every single day in the same capacity as Kris to help defend America, 
we place them in God's hands and ask for His blessing on them all; and 
for us here in this body, for the task that lays ahead of us, to help 
support him and America.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend for joining me today.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I went to Central Asia and I know my 
colleague has spent a lot of time on the border, and sometimes our 
constituents ask us why we go. They think it is some kind of a junket. 
It is to go to see a couple of things. It is to go to see these Krises 
around the borders, around the world who are on the front lines each 
and every day, to put a face with the people on the front line.
  Central Asia, I was over there and I took a video camera, and I ran 
into about 10 or 12 constituents who are in K-2, who were at the Moscow 
embassy, who were on the U.S. George Washington, who were in Bahrain, 
and what we did is we just asked them to send a message back home. And 
we asked them, who do you want me to call? And you end up calling 
parents, husbands, grandparents; and each of these Krises around the 
world have loved ones that care deeply about them. So we have got to, 
number one, just to meet our constituents and to demonstrate that we 
care and we are concerned about the environment that we have put them 
in.
  The second reason we go, and my colleague has gone along the border, 
is to find out whether we have given them the resources to do the job. 
What my colleague has tragically found out in Arizona is maybe we have 
not given them the resources, and maybe we have not paid as much 
attention to this issue as we should have. And for us to put our front 
line folks in that type of a position, my colleague has identified it, 
Congress can no longer say we did not know. We now know. And it is now 
our responsibility to respond. And we will have the opportunity to do 
that through the appropriations process. I think this year maybe we can 
move more human resources down to Organ Pipe and also where we can help 
construct some type of barrier to allow the more sophisticated illegal 
crossings to stop.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I certainly hope we will do that. I hope 
we will begin a process that will eventually lead to our being able to 
tell our constituents that we are living up to the commitments we have 
made to try to protect and defend this Nation.
  No matter what we do, it is possible, of course, that someone may 
come across these borders to do us harm. We may not be able to get 
everyone who tries, that is true. But we can do so much more than we 
are presently doing.
  We can use technology along with human resources so much more 
effectively than what we are presently doing. It just takes will power. 
In many ways I look at Chris and others and I think of them as the 
folks who went to serve in Vietnam. We asked them to go. We put them in 
harm's way. We told them the country needed them but there was no real 
will to win the war, and we left them sort of out on a limb. And we are 
still paying the price for that, for what we did to the men and women 
who served in the armed forces in Vietnam by sending them to a war that 
we really and truly were not committed to win.
  That is how I view the situation on the border with Kris, the border 
patrol, the Park Service, Customs agents, Forest Service people. We put 
them there, but I do not know whether or not we have the will to really 
win this war. It tests our mettle here as well as theirs to determine 
how far are we willing to go, what are we willing to do here in this 
body to say that this is not going to happen again or to say that, in 
fact, we are serious about trying to defend the Nation.
  We are about, well, perhaps, we are going to be sending men and women 
off again into harm's way into Iraq. We are told that this is a 
distinct possibility. The President may be coming to the Congress in a 
very short time asking for our support of that endeavor. Do we think 
for a moment that if we in fact move forward on that, and I tend to 
believe that we have to do that, but do we think for a moment that 
there will not be ramifications in the United States? Do we think for a 
moment that Saddam Hussein believes he can win a war in Iraq against 
our military might? No. He knows that is not possible. He knows that we 
are most vulnerable here. And he will try to bring the battle to us.
  We are told every day that another attack in the United States is 
imminent. Well, how logical does it seem to you or any of our 
colleagues, I wonder, that we will spend an enormous amount of our 
treasury and our human resources in places thousands of miles away 
which, again, I am not going to argue right now as to whether or not it 
is appropriate. I tend to think it is. But we are doing nothing 
significant on our own border. Is this not the height of folly?
  Is this not so irresponsible to us to not recognize that we are 
laying ourselves bare, laying ourselves open to greater attacks? And, 
yes, we are looking internally on how to deal with it. Maybe we will 
try to find them when they are here. Why not try to stop them before 
they get here? We may not absolutely be able to do it for every single 
person, for every single threat, but we can do far more than we are 
doing.

                              {time}  1430

  Just that, if we do that, if we commit to it. If we put the troops, 
if we use the military on our border to help support the Park Service, 
the border patrol and the forest service, we will have done, I think, a 
service to Kris Eggle and to the others who face danger every single 
day down there, and we will be doing our job. It is our responsibility 
here. It is not asking us to go the extra mile, for heaven's sake. It 
is asking us and the President of the United States to do exactly what 
we are supposed to do as well as the folks who are supposed to direct 
the resources of the Nation to its defense, and I fear that we are not 
doing it today.
  I, of course, represent Columbine, the school in which such a tragedy 
occurred just a few years ago, and it was the most horrendous event I 
have ever gone through in public life, and I keep thinking about the 
fact that there were some good things that happened, and in every 
single horrible event something good does come out of it. We have to 
pray that this is the case, and it usually is.
  Out of Kris's death, something good has got to happen here, and that 
is that we will, in fact, redouble our efforts, triple our efforts to 
protect his colleagues and our constituents from the forces of evil 
that are directed against us. I feel that that is what he would want us 
to do, and I do not mean just the al Qaeda agents, the cells that are 
operating. I mean the forces of evil that are importing drugs, sex 
slaves, all the rest that are coming across this border for the 
purposes of poisoning our children and our culture.
  We also have a responsibility internally to do what we can to 
restructure the culture, to reinvigorate our own culture and to imbue 
it with what is good and right and just, but at the same time, we must 
do everything we can to make sure that these people cannot just come 
into the country at their will; just as my colleague said, what he was 
talking about the fact that this is our, as a Congress, it is our 
responsibility. We cannot ignore it. We

[[Page 16423]]

cannot walk away from it, and it would be the best possible memorial we 
could give, I think, to Kris Eggle.

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