[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 18426-18433]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, on September 10 and 11, we are going to be 
holding an event here in Washington, D.C. We call it the Day of 
Remembrance Event. The Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus is 
sponsoring this day of remembrance for victims of open borders on those 
days, September 11, in Washington, D.C.

[[Page 18427]]

  Mr. Speaker, information about that is available if one were to go to 
the Web site, victimsvoice.org. Activities on that day will include 
press availability for dozens of victims who are willing to tell their 
stories, a news conference at 11 a.m. for victims identified and 
introduced by Members of Congress who are members of the Immigration 
Reform Caucus. There will be a photo display illustrating dozens of 
victims' stories, later a dinner program to honor victims and present 
the first annual Kris Eggle award for heroism in immigration law 
enforcement.
  The purpose of the day of remembrance is to expand public awareness 
and understanding of the immense harm done to our Nation and our 
citizens by our open borders policy and lax enforcement of our 
immigration laws. For too long we have talked about these problems in 
terms only related to numbers. We have used lots of statistics to try 
and bring home the point that our Nation's immigration policy, or lack 
thereof, our Nation's open borders policy, which is really what it is, 
has done enormous harm to the Nation and promises to even do greater 
harm to the Nation.
  But what we want to do on September 10 and 11, Mr. Speaker, is to 
actually identify the people, to put faces with the statistics, to see 
how these things, open borders especially and our Nation's policies 
toward immigration, have wreaked havoc on our population and has the 
potential of doing great harm to the Nation.
  Over a million illegal aliens enter our country each year by coming 
across our porous borders. Immigration authorities do not know who they 
are or where they are going.
  There are over 80,000 convicted felons on immigration agencies' 
absconders lists. They have been ordered deported but remain at large 
in the United States.
  There are over 100,000 additional convicted felons released from 
jails and prisons every year and not deported, even though the laws of 
the United States have been broken by these people.
  Over 1 million foreign workers have been allowed to come to this 
country to replace American workers through the H-1B and L-1 visa 
programs. Many of them have overstayed, hundreds of thousands of them 
have overstayed their visas and in fact are living here illegally but 
are employed in various industries, taking jobs away from Americans, 
forcing American citizens to change their life-style dramatically, all 
because American industry, American corporations have embarked upon a 
policy of cheap labor and they have done so with the agreement of this 
government and the acquiescence of the government to this policy of 
cheap labor.

                              {time}  2215

  These people, the folks who have been displaced by foreign workers, 
the folks who have had family members killed, folks who have had family 
members attacked, beaten, robbed, raped, all these people are victims, 
as well, of course, as those who have paid the ultimate price and have 
died as a result of the crimes committed by people who are here 
illegally. These people need to be recognized, and maybe, just maybe, 
by bringing them to the attention of the public, by bringing them to 
the attention of the Congress, we will be able to move one step closer 
to actually gaining control of our borders.
  A simple request that all of them have. That is the one thing that 
most, in fact all of the folks who will be here, I think, have in 
common, a request that our borders be secured. Many of them will be 
asking that our relationship, especially with countries like Mexico and 
other countries in Latin America, be addressed so that extradition can 
be achieved so that when people have fled the United States after 
committing these heinous crimes, fled the United States from Mexico and 
other places that refuse to extradite criminals back to the United 
States, what these victims are pleading for and the families of victims 
are pleading for is that we negotiate with Mexico and other countries 
to get these people back to face justice. That is what they will be 
asking for.
  As I said, we will be giving out an award at that time, the Kris 
Eggle Award for Heroism and Immigration Law Enforcement. It will be 
presented at a dinner sponsored by the Congressional Immigration Reform 
Caucus and the National Center for Citizenship and Immigration. Kris 
Eggle is someone I will talk about in just a moment or two because I am 
going to go through quite a list this evening. I am going to go through 
a list of people who have been harmed by our immigration policy, 
personally affected.
  Not too long ago, Mr. Speaker, someone came up to me and said, You 
know why you really cannot gain a foothold on this issue? You know why 
you cannot get the Congress of the United States to respond to you when 
you go on the floor night after night, when you offer all the 
amendments that you offer dealing with this issue of immigration 
reform? Do you know why you cannot get people to support you? It is 
because, frankly, when you think about it, to whom does this matter, to 
whom does the issue of immigration and immigration reform matter? To 
people coming across the border, of course, it matters a great deal. 
They do not want any sort of reform. They do not want anybody to stop 
them from coming across. For people who are bringing them across, the 
coyotes, the people who make money by bringing people across into this 
country illegally, they certainly do not want anybody to interfere. It 
is a big deal to them. They care a great deal about this whole issue.
  To the people who are affected like the individuals that I am going 
to bring up here tonight, they care a great deal because they have been 
personally affected and maybe to the point in time when that happened, 
up to that point in time, they were not really concerned. They were 
like most Americans, and that is when this friend of mine said to me: 
you have got a lot of people who are concerned because they are 
benefiting from open borders. But to most Americans it is a little 
concern. It is not a big one.
  And to most Americans, frankly, there is possibly the feeling that 
they too somehow, some way, maybe in a small way, but they also benefit 
from people who come across our borders illegally. They get their lawn 
mowed more inexpensively. They get their house painted, a variety of 
other things that we all know many people who are here illegally are 
employed doing. And to them they want to sort of look away. If one 
pressed individuals, they might say, yes, there is a problem. We really 
should do something about our borders. But down deep they think, I kind 
of benefit from it. I mean, maybe when I go to the grocery store and 
buy a head of lettuce, I am paying a few cents less for that head of 
lettuce. So maybe I should not care all that much and I am not going to 
really press it. I want to try to impress upon those people so that 
they can impress upon their Representatives in this body that it is 
important, that these things do matter, and that they too can be 
affected in the most severe fashion.
  So I am going to talk tonight about a lot of folks who have been 
affected in the most dramatic way imaginable. They have had their lives 
turned inside out, essentially. They have had their family members, as 
I say, murdered. They have lost family members. They have many times 
been affected by our open borders. And many of the folks are people 
that have been affected because they have lost their jobs.
  Let me say there are some, I do not know, 11 to 13 million people who 
are living here in the United States illegally. No one knows the exact 
number, of course. But that is a pretty good guess, 11 to 13 million 
people. And for the most part, the people who are here illegally are 
doing jobs that, I am told, I hear this often enough, Americans, other 
Americans, will not take. I challenge that, Mr. Speaker.
  I challenge that notion that there are all these people here taking 
jobs that no other American would take. And just as an example, we will 
talk for just a minute about the people who are dramatically affected 
by massive immigration of low-skilled, low-wage workers into the United 
States. And

[[Page 18428]]

these are people at the lowest economic level in our society. They are 
more often than not low-skilled, low-wage workers who have time and 
again found themselves either out of jobs or only able to obtain jobs 
paying very little money, and these people are affected negatively. 
Many of them are American citizens, many of them whose families have 
been here for generations, longer than my family has been here; but 
they find themselves unable to break out of a cycle of poverty, always 
stuck in low-wage jobs, and the pay for those jobs does not increase as 
it should in a market like ours, if in fact that market were allowed to 
adjust because of supply and demand.
  But what happens when we allow 11 to 13 million people into this 
country illegally, many of them low-skilled, low-wage workers, is we 
depress the wage rates for people in that category. And simply because 
there are so many people seeking those jobs. In America today we know 
that we have changed dramatically from an industrial and agricultural 
society, a society that relied heavily on brawn as opposed to brains 
for the production of goods and services to now a technological 
society, an information-based society that relies heavily on the 
acquisition of knowledge and certain very important skills.
  So, therefore, folks at the lower range are already at an economic 
disadvantage, but we put them at an even worse economic disadvantage by 
importing labor, by allowing the importation of labor even in illegal 
fashion where millions of people come here seeking jobs that require 
very little skill and, therefore, are paid very little. Certain 
employers benefit from that arrangement. That is undeniably true. And 
even one can say that a lot of people are coming here and bettering 
their lives even though they are making very little money because where 
they came from, it was even worse.
  There is a fascinating book that has just been written; and, Mr. 
Speaker, I would certainly encourage anyone to get ahold of this 
particular book. It is called ``Mexifornia.'' ``Mexifornia.'' And it is 
written by a professor of the classics at an institution of higher 
education in California, who is also a farmer, and I believe it is 
Selma, California; and he is third or fourth generation on this farm, 
and he takes an interesting look at this phenomena. And what he 
describes is fascinating in a number of ways. As I said, I really do 
suggest people obtain this book and read it carefully because, for one 
thing, it is really well written. This gentleman's style of writing is 
great and very compelling. But it also describes a phenomenon that we 
do not really hear about very often, we have not read about, and that 
is what happens to the people who do come here as low-wage, low-skilled 
workers in their late teens or early 20's.
  What happens to them after, I do not know, 20 or 30 years at most of 
hard labor in the United States, 20 or 30 years where they are making 
minimum wage and at first it looks alluring to them? At first it looks 
like they can buy things that they would not have been able to buy had 
they stayed in the country of their birth. A material world almost 
immediately appeals to them and seems within reach and within their 
grasp, and they begin what they think is a new life in a new world that 
is going to be prosperous and better for them and their family, and 
what they find out is that after 20 or 30 years of hard labor, they are 
physically incapable of doing the work anymore, but there is nothing 
else out there for them, that they have not achieved the ``American 
Dream.''
  They have stayed at that same level of both income and of poverty for 
lo these many years, and now there is nowhere left to go. There is no 
upward mobility left. They are just physically not able to actually 
pursue that dream anymore, and they become a ward of the state for all 
intents and purposes. They become unemployed and disillusioned, and so 
are their children. And what he points out in this book is that 
contrary to what has happened in the United States in the past in our 
history where immigrant families have come, labored hard, their 
children have then gone on to the next stage, that is to say, gotten an 
education, moved up the economic ladder and become part of the middle 
class, second or third generation, it is not happening for many of the 
people who are coming here today, especially from Mexico, and again for 
a wide variety of reasons, but it not happening.
  That second generation is not achieving, is not moving ahead, is not 
getting the education. In fact, what we see is that those kids are 
dropping out of high school, never getting to college, and Hispanic 
Americans, unfortunately, Hispanics living in this country legally or 
illegally, and their children are not moving ahead and achieving the 
same sorts of goals as immigrants of the past. And as I say, there are 
many reasons why this may be occurring, but it is the phenomenon.
  It is an interesting one, and it is one that I think should be 
discussed because in a way it is almost like we are importing throwaway 
people. We are using them for the skills that they have for the labor 
that they can provide, the cheap labor that they can provide for a few 
years and then they are discarded, and they become certainly an expense 
for the taxpayers of the Nation, and that is why often we hear the 
phrase ``cheap labor is not cheap.''
  Cheap labor costs us a great deal. It costs us in terms of the 
depressed wage rates that it imposes upon low-skilled, low-wage workers 
in the United States and, therefore, essentially a drag on the economy. 
It costs us in terms of the infrastructure that has to be created to 
support the basic needs of the people who come here and of their 
children who do not get out of this cycle of poverty. It is a fact, an 
empirically provable fact, that these folks unfortunately access the 
welfare system far more than nonimmigrants. It is also a fact that our 
schools are inundated with children with great difficulties, especially 
language difficulties, therefore creating an expense, a significant 
expense, to try to teach. All these things are happening in the pursuit 
of cheap labor, cheap labor at the low-skill level.
  By the way, the book I mentioned earlier, ``Mexifornia,'' it is 
written by a gentleman by the name of Victor Davis Hanson.

                              {time}  2230

  It is called ``Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.'' And in the small 
critique of the book the author says, ``Massive illegal immigration 
from Mexico into California, Victor Davis Hanson writes, ``coupled with 
the loss of confidence and the old melting pot model of transforming 
newcomers into Americans is changing the very nature of the State.'' He 
says, ``Yet we Californians have been inadequate in meeting this 
challenge, both failing to control our borders with Mexico and to 
integrate the new alien population into our mainstream.''
  The critique says, ``Noted for his military histories and especially 
his social commentary of post-9/11 American life, Hanson is a fifth-
generation Californian who teaches college classics courses and runs a 
family farm. ``Mexifornia'' is part history, part political analysis, 
part memoir. It is an intensely personal book about what has changed in 
California over the last quarter century and how the real losers in the 
chaos caused by hemorrhaging borders are the Mexican immigrants 
themselves.
  ``A large part of the problem, Hanson believes, comes from the 
opportunistic coalition that stymies immigration reform and, even 
worse, stifles an honest discussion of this growing problem.'' And how 
true that statement is. How desperately we try to avoid the discussion 
of this problem, yet how desperately we need to discuss the problem.
  ``Corporations,'' he says, ``contractors, and agribusiness demand 
cheap wage labor from Mexico, whatever the social consequences. 
Meanwhile, academics, journalists, government bureaucrats, and La Raza 
advocates envision illegal aliens as a vast new political constituency 
for those committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is 
the key to advancement.''
  Again, how powerful those words. Mr. Speaker, I just cannot emphasize 
how important they are to understand.

[[Page 18429]]

``Advocates envision legal aliens as a vast new political constituency 
for those committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is 
the key to advancement.''
  How many times I have come to this floor and explained that the 
problem I have is the problem that occurs in both political parties, on 
the one hand, the Republican Party that seeks this cheap labor and, on 
the other hand, the Democratic Party that seeks, as it is pointed out 
here, a political constituency ``committed to the notion that 
victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement.'' Oh, how well 
that is put.
  ``Mexifornia'' is an indictment of the policies that got California 
into its present mess. But this beautifully written book also reflects 
Hanson's strong belief that our traditions of assimilation, 
integration, and inter-marriage may yet remedy a problem that the 
politicians and ideologues have allowed to get out of hand; and I 
certainly hope that that is possible. But I guarantee my colleagues 
this, and I think that Mr. Hanson agrees, if I remember correctly in 
the book, that unless we begin to control our borders, unless we begin 
to actually get a handle on our borders, to be able to say that they 
are even somewhat secure, we can never, and I mean never, begin to 
think about a solution.
  Because although America is, of course, as has been stated many 
times, a nation of immigrants. It is a nation of immigration that has 
occurred at peaks and valleys where we have had significant increases 
over time in immigration and significant decreases. We have had periods 
of high immigration and periods of very low immigration, and usually 
those periods of high immigration are followed by periods of low 
immigration that give us enough time to actually integrate the people 
who have come here in the wave of immigration.
  That is not happening today, and that is desperately needed. We need 
a time out, Mr. Speaker. We need time as a Nation to integrate the 
people who have come here, to encourage them to become part of this 
American mosaic. But there are so many forces arrayed against that 
integration, against that process that I worry about our being able to 
accomplish it.
  I have stated on many occasions that we have something called a cult 
of multiculturalism that pervades our society, that encourages 
separation of groups in the country, again, the victimized classes. It 
encourages people to keep separate their language, keep separate their 
culture, even their political allegiances. It encourages them to keep 
citizenship of a country from which they came.
  So now we have 6 to 8 to 10 million, we are not sure how many, people 
who are living here with dual citizenship, with something that has 
never, ever been the case in the past. We have had 100,000 at any given 
time in the Nation, but in the last several years it has grown into the 
millions and maybe close to 10 million people. Again, we are not 
positive, but we know there are at least 6 million, which again is far 
more than we have ever had in the past, people who are claiming dual 
citizenship.
  Why is this happening, and what are the implications of that kind of 
a phenomenon? What does that mean for America?
  I suggest that the problems are significant and that they are real 
and they are problems that we must discuss on this floor and we must 
discuss in this body and in the other body and in the White House, even 
though they are distressing to some, even though they are certainly 
politically unpopular to talk about, even though we risk the epithets 
that are always attached and thrown at people who do try to discuss 
these issues.
  No one, no one, Mr. Speaker, enjoys being called names because they 
are committed to the concept of immigration reform. No one enjoys 
getting the kind of mail that we get and getting the kind of calls that 
I get. No one thinks that that is pleasurable. No one wants to be at 
odds with their own party, their own President over issues like this. 
Certainly I do not.
  But I assure my colleagues that the problem is so severe, at least I 
believe it to be so severe, that one must endure those things if they 
are to live up to the commitment they made when they took an oath of 
office to serve in this body.
  So tonight, as I say, among other things, I wanted to talk about 
individuals. I wanted to give my colleagues faces and names to go with 
the statistics that I oftentimes come to this body and present.
  There is another Web site that I might mention. It is called 
ImmigrationsHumanCost.org, from which I have taken a number of 
individual cases that I want to share with my colleagues tonight.
  As this site identifies, there are an enormous number of Americans 
who have been harmed by the criminals who pass through the Nation's 
open borders. For that reason, this section can only provide a symbolic 
tribute to the many unnamed victims who have been killed, raped, 
robbed, crippled, and otherwise personally violated.
  Remember, I mentioned earlier that there are really two categories of 
individuals who have been harmed by our country's immigration policy: 
the low-wage worker and the higher-skilled workers, and I will talk 
about them later also, those people who have been displaced in their 
jobs, thrown out of their jobs or are now underemployed because we have 
imported what is called H-1B or L-1 workers into this country by the 
hundreds of thousands, now reaching I think into the millions. These 
people have come over from India, primarily, but from all over the 
world, really, and taken jobs from American workers; and, again, we 
will talk about that. But those people are also victims of our open 
borders policy, and their lives deserve to be critiqued, and their 
problems deserve to be identified, especially in this body that allows 
this kind of a thing to go on.
  But first we are going to talk a little bit about the people who have 
been victimized by violent crime perpetrated by people who have come 
here illegally or have fled this country for the safe haven of Mexico 
and other countries that will not extradite them to the United States.
  The first one I might mention is a gentleman by the name of Kris 
Eggle. I mentioned him before. I told my colleagues that we are going 
to have, on September 10 and 11 that week, we are going to be holding a 
series of events; and on that evening of September 10 we will be 
holding a dinner honoring Mr. Eggle. We are handing out an award in his 
name. This will be an award given to someone who has served this Nation 
faithfully in a law enforcement capacity and who has either given his 
or her life in that quest or has done something extraordinary to help 
defend the Nation's borders.
  The murder of Kris Eggle. He was a park ranger in Organ Pipe Cactus 
National Monument in southern Arizona. It happened on August 9, 2002. 
It was very little noted by the media. We brought it to the attention 
of this body, this particular crime. I tried over and over again; and, 
finally, we did get some attention paid to it.
  I went to Mr. Eggle's funeral. He was 28 years old. I went to his 
funeral in Arizona, and I saw his family. I saw their tears, and I saw 
the tears of his colleagues, and I wept with them. He was a young man 
cut down in his prime, killed by an illegal alien who crossed the 
border for the purpose of evading the law in Mexico after they had 
committed several murders there in some sort of drug-related deal.
  Mr. Eggle was a valedictorian and an Eagle Scout who joined the 
National Park Service because he loved the outdoors. Organ Pipe, by the 
way, is considered to be the most dangerous of the national park 
system. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 illegal aliens and 700,000 pounds of drugs 
were intercepted in the park in 2001. Now that just gives us a hint of 
the volume of both the traffic in drugs and the traffic in people 
through that area, just that one area of our border. Mr. Speaker, 
200,000 interdicted, 700,000 pounds of drugs. Can we imagine how much 
got by? I mean, they always estimate that at least five get by of every 
one person that gets intercepted at the border. A million people just 
through

[[Page 18430]]

this area in one year. God knows how much illegal drugs were also moved 
through that particular area.
  Remember, just a tiny little area on our southern border. Imagine 
what that means across the whole border and across the northern border, 
5,000 miles of border.
  The Eggle family is determined that the death will not be forgotten 
by working for real border control. Well, I commit myself and have 
committed myself to help the Eggles to do everything I possibly can to 
keep this young man's memory alive.
  Let us go on. There are others. There are many others. I am going to 
go through quite a few this evening. Because I want their memories to 
remain alive, and I want their families to know that somebody does 
care, and that somebody, many people in this body, hopefully, are going 
to join me to try to do something about this, to stop it, to make sure 
it does not happen to other Americans.
  David Nadel, a familiar community activist in Berkeley, California, 
owned the popular Ashkenaz dance club that featured eclectic music such 
as zydeco, cajun, klezmer and the blues. In 1996 he was murdered in the 
club by an apparent illegal alien Mexican named Juan Rivera Perez, whom 
Nadel had earlier ejected for harassing other patrons. Perez was in 
Ashkenaz as part of an English as a Second Language program graduation 
party. Police believe Perez escaped to Mexico, which is famously 
unhelpful in extraditing violent criminals.
  Despite the outcry from law enforcement and from victims and the 
press, our government does not insist on normal compliance in law 
enforcement from Mexican authorities. This is a theme we are going to 
revisit over and over in the lives of the people I am going to talk 
about here and in the crimes. They have gone to Mexico. They will not 
send them back here.
  Mexico first started out saying that if they faced the death penalty 
in the United States, they would not send them back because that was 
cruel and unusual punishment. They have now decided that even life 
imprisonment in the United States is cruel and unusual punishment.
  Let me say clearly that it presents this picture of Mexico with this 
benevolent society with a very sort of progressive, if you will, 
attitude about criminal justice. I will tell my colleagues this, Mr. 
Speaker. It is not uncommon at all that people get executed in Mexico 
for committing certain crimes. The difference is oftentimes the police 
do not wait for a trial to execute the perpetrator or even the alleged 
perpetrator. So it is not that they have this sort of attitude that, 
again, we have to be much more liberal in the way we treat criminals 
than in the United States.

                              {time}  2245

  They could not care less how we treat criminals. Frankly, what they 
are doing, Mr. Speaker, is trying to use this as a way to leverage the 
United States into coming up with a ``migration accord,'' something 
that many people in this body care about a great deal, have tried many 
times, as a matter of fact, to get past a migration accord.
  Now, what is this migration accord? It is simply an agreement between 
the United States and Mexico that certain people are hoping for that 
will, in fact, eventually create amnesty for all the people living here 
illegally, and the government of Mexico wants that so they use every 
kind of trick they can imagine to get us to do it, including the use of 
the extradition treaty with the United States and making it more 
difficult to get people back here to actually serve for their crimes.
  Another case of justice denied, the murderer of a Phoenix high school 
student, Tanee Natividad, merely crossed the border into Mexico to 
escape law enforcement, her murder. A local television station was able 
to track down the murderer in a bar just a few miles across the border 
without much effort. Max LaMadrid had no reason to hide because the 
Mexican Government actually helps violent criminals escape American 
justice.
  According to Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano, action by the 
Mexican Supreme Court making it more difficult to extradite criminals 
has ``created an incentive for people to flee into Mexico as a safe 
harbor.'' True, Attorney General Napolitano, you have done absolutely 
nothing to help us change this situation, to help us address the 
problem. You are part of the problem.
  At one time Mexico would not extradite criminals who might be subject 
to the death penalty. Therefore, they have given a free pass to 
rapists, kidnappers and child molesters. In fact, the investigating 
reporter in this case found 100 cases of violent criminals from the 
Phoenix area escaping into Mexico in just a few years. Meanwhile, the 
grieving family of a 16-year-old Tanee gets no justice, like thousands 
of others in the Southwest.
  I want you to understand, Mr. Speaker, that for every single person I 
identify here, for every person whose name I bring to the attention of 
this body, there are literally hundreds, in fact, there are thousands 
and thousands of others who suffer the same sort of plight but whose 
names will not be brought to our attention, because for one thing, 
there simply is not time. We could be here for months, never once 
stopping in just identifying the names of the victims. But that is 
again what we hope to do, some of the things we hope to do on September 
10 and 11 when we invite all people who have been victimized by our 
open borders to come to Washington, come to the Nation's Capital and 
express their concern, tell their story to their Representatives and to 
their Senators. That will be the next day's activities. On the 11th 
they will be visiting their Congressmen, their Senators, telling them 
about how they have been victimized by open borders.
  Mr. Speaker, we, of course, encourage everyone to go to that Web site 
and sign up, victimsvoice.org.
  Let us go on to Darlene Squires, the distraught mother of a disabled 
teenager, one of two girls who were raped on October 24, is pictured 
here on this page. Her daughter was one of two who were raped on 
October 21, 2002, by three members of a Salvadoran street gang located 
in Somerville, Massachusetts. Age 17 and 14, both victims are deaf and 
one has cerebral palsy. Miss Squires believed that the attacks were a 
retaliation against her family because her husband confronted the young 
men after they had harassed the Squires' son. Later reports indicated 
the men arrested for the crime were illegal aliens. Law enforcement 
officials who were concerned about increased violence from this, it is 
called MS-13 Gang, which was believed to have originated in part with 
soldiers and their families who left El Salvador.
  Local residents estimate the gang has more than 100 members in their 
community. An update a few months after the Squires crime showed that 
gang problem in the community has only gotten worse.
  The lives of many law enforcement officers have been lost at the 
hands of criminal and violent aliens. One such officer is David March. 
This is a gentleman I will talk about at some length. He was a Los 
Angeles County Sheriff. He was killed when he pulled over a car for a 
routine traffic stop. The driver was a dangerous Mexican drug dealer, 
Armando Garcia, which I have a picture here.
  Mr. Garcia had been deported twice, get that, he had been deported 
twice and had a long history of violent crimes. After shooting Sheriff 
March twice in the head, Garcia was able to escape and is believed to 
be in Mexico where officials refuse to send him back for trial. Garcia 
is also wanted for two attempted murders.
  The Attorneys General of all 50 States wrote to Attorney General 
Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell to demand action on the 
extradition issue. Now, I want to go back and explain, deported twice. 
This means he simply came back across the border each time, and time 
and again this happens. This is not unique. This is not an aberration. 
That is my point in bringing this out. If this were something that 
happened, a horrible, tragic situation that we can say, well, gee, 
goodness knows that does not happen a

[[Page 18431]]

lot. It happens all the time. It happens literally thousands of times 
across this country. This is the gentleman, Armando Garcia, who shot 
Sheriff March when he walked up to the car, then got out and shot him 
twice more in the head.
  I visited with Mrs. March not too long ago. I went to the memorial 
that is on a rather nondescript street in an industrial area in Los 
Angeles. Hundreds of thousands of cars traveling by all the time, every 
month or so and thousands of cars a day; and I do not know how many 
even notice this small memorial that is on the side of the street. But 
Mrs. March goes by all the time. And she stops and she gets out and she 
kneels down, and she says a prayer for her husband and the father of 
her child. And she says a prayer that her husband's killer will be 
extradited back to the United States and face justice so she can begin 
to put her life in order and put this event behind her, if you ever 
can, of course.
  I visited that place with her and she shed tears and I shed tears. 
And these incidents, as I say, point out that the statistics need to be 
reinforced with real names and real faces so that people understand 
they are not just numbers. And that these people have actually 
experienced what they have experienced as a result of policies either 
adopted by this body and this government or policies we refuse to 
adopt, policies that would actually begin to secure the border.
  It is certainly true, Mr. Speaker, that even if we did everything 
possible to secure our borders, even if we did everything we could 
possibly do, that things like this still may happen. Certainly they 
will. People may still be able to get across the border. Surely that is 
true. We will never be able to secure it 100 percent, but I guarantee 
you this, at least we will be able to say to Mrs. March and all of the 
other families of all of the other victims that we have tried 
everything we can do to protect them and their loved ones. We cannot 
say that today. In all good conscience we cannot say that today.
  Now, compared with many others we have identified who suffered 
violent crime, Barbara Vidlak got off easy and was just a victim of 
identity theft. Still you would not want her problems. The rip-off of 
her Social Security number by an illegal immigrant has caused Barbara's 
phone to be turned off, loss of health insurance for her two children, 
as well as extra money out of her pocket for credit checks and expenses 
such as lost time at work. She has also had to act as a detective to 
track down the culprit who filled her life with turmoil and stress.
  The reporting on this crime is notable for its relentless sympathy 
for the perpetrator, even when the damage to the victim is obvious for 
all to see. Rather than note how illegal immigration is not a 
victimless crime, reported Cindy Gonzalez, ``an immigrant rights 
activist'' who says that in some ways both women are victims, both Ms. 
Vidlak and the person who stole her identity. No, I would tell the 
immigrants rights activist, that is absolutely and patently untrue. Ms. 
Vidlak is the aggrieved party. She is the victim, not the perpetrator, 
not the person who stole her identity.
  How about 18-year-old Tricia Taylor of Detroit? She was in court in 
December of 2002 to hear the plea of the illegal alien who caused her 
to lose both legs above the knees. Jose Carcamo was driving under the 
influence of alcohol and speeding when he drove over a curb and smashed 
Taylor into a wall. One report stated that Carcamo had 17 violations 
since 1995. Another noted he was drag racing at the time of the crash. 
It was agreed that the car was traveling between 50 and 75 miles per 
hour on a street posted for 25 miles per hour.
  Taylor's companion, Noah Menard, suffered a fractured skull and 
collar bone, as well as requiring 8 pins to reconstruct her mangled 
elbow. The INS has twice begun deportation proceedings to return him to 
El Salvador, but regrettably did not follow through. Carcamo will be 
out of jail in a few years, but Tricia Taylor faces a lifetime of pain 
and disability because of another failure of the INS to remove a 
dangerous alien.
  Another American stymied in pursuit of justice for a murder trial is 
Ron Cornell. His son Joey was killed by Gonzalo Villalobos who escaped 
to Mexico and like so many others is being protected by the Mexican 
Government's refusal to extradite. At one point, Gonzalo Villalobos' 
whereabouts in El Salvador were known precisely, but there is no 
extradition cooperation with that nation either.
  You all remember perhaps that after the devastation of Hurricane 
Mitch in 1998 the United States sent $110 million in disaster relief to 
El Salvador, but they will not even talk to us about an extradition 
treaty.
  In June 2002, four residents of Whidbey Island in Washington were the 
shooting victims of a Jamaican national who was evidently frustrated 
that his plans had been ruined to get a green card through a marriage 
to an American woman. Preston Dean Douglas angered his girlfriend Holly 
Swartz because he sexually abused her 7-year-old daughter. When Holly 
moved herself and her child into her mother's house, Douglas reacted by 
shooting Holly, her mother, Marjorie Monnet, the mother of eight 
children, Marjorie's son Bruce, and Bruce's girlfriend, Sierra Klug. 
Holly and Marjorie were killed. Bruce and Sierra survived. Douglas shot 
and killed himself. Reportedly Douglas was in the country illegally, 
though he was working as a bouncer at a local Chinese restaurant.
  One day after New Year's 2003, 6-year-old Jose Soto was riding his 
bike around the parking lot in his parents' apartment house when he was 
struck and severely injured by a man backing out in a red truck. 
Witnesses were shocked when the man stopped and pulled the child from 
under the truck and roughly threw him aside before speeding off. At 
this writing, Jose is in critical condition in the Houston hospital and 
the perpetrator is believed to be on his way to Mexico, if not already 
there. The man's name was released a few days later, Jose Ines Morales. 
As noted above, once a criminal has reached Mexico, he has effectively 
eluded the law permanently.
  Sister Helen Chaska was murdered in late September 2002 by being 
strangled with her rosary beads. The beads were found embedded in her 
neck. She was also raped, as was another nun who accompanied Sister 
Helen during walking prayers. Both women were in Klamath Falls, Oregon, 
doing missionary work when the crimes occurred. Her accused murderer is 
Maximiliano Esparza, who is in the United States illegally. He was 
convicted in 1988 of robbery and kidnapping in Los Angeles. He was 
sentenced to 6 years in prison, and he was released in 1992 and was on 
probation until 1995.

                              {time}  2300

  By law, this man should have been deported to Mexico after his 
release in 1992. Instead, the INS allowed him to remain in the United 
States and commit even more heinous crimes.
  By the way, I want to harken back a moment to statistics I gave 
earlier. Right now, there are approximately 400,000 people who have 
been ordered to be deported; that is to say, they have somehow gotten 
themselves afoul of the law. They have gotten into the criminal justice 
system, and they have been found guilty by a court. Usually, this is an 
immigration court, and they have been ordered deported.
  Now they are supposed to leave from the courtroom and go right into 
the hands of the INS and be deported to their country of origin, but we 
do not, in fact, deport people very often, and the INS really does not 
pay an awful lot of attention, so that 400,000 of the millions who have 
gone through this process are now walking around the United States. 
Eighty thousand of those, at least 80,000 of those are criminals who 
are violent criminals, felons, rapists, murderers, robbers, walking 
around our streets because the INS failed to do their job, committing 
crimes like the ones I am going through here.
  It has been a decade since Oregon State trooper Bret Clodfelter was 
murdered by an illegal alien, but the crime has not been forgotten. 
Trooper Clodfelter of Klamath Falls had arrested three Mexican men for 
being

[[Page 18432]]

drunk and disorderly, then offered them a ride and was murdered for his 
generosity. The prosecutor sought the death penalty, but one dissenting 
juror meant Francisco Manzo-Hernandez got life in prison instead. To 
add to the tragedy, Clodfelter's widow Rene committed suicide a year 
after her husband was murdered. The couple had been married just over a 
month when her husband was murdered.
  Officer Sheila Herring was lost to a bullet from an illegal alien in 
an early morning altercation at a Norfolk bar on January 16. The 
accused man, Mario Roberto Keen, a citizen of Jamaica, had reportedly 
shot a man in the bar after the police were called. When several 
officers arrived, Keen opened fire and shot Officer Herring, who died 
later in surgery. Keen was shot and killed at the scene.
  He had been sentenced to 5 years in prison in 1990 for the selling of 
cocaine and was later deported but somehow got back into the United 
States. Imagine that. Keen attempted to reenter the United States again 
in 1997, was reportedly barred from entering. It is not known when Keen 
was successful in entering the United States, but he did get back in. 
He got back in time to kill Sheila Herring.
  From all accounts she was an excellent police officer, loved her job. 
She had been a cop in Detroit for 10 years before moving to Virginia. 
She was 39, had an 18-year-old daughter.
  Angie Morfin of Salinas, California, testified before the House 
Immigration Subcommittee in June, 1999, about the murder of her 13-
year-old son by an illegal alien gangster. Her boy Ruben was simply in 
the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot down by a Mexican who 
escaped to Mexico. Her testimony also noted how the Latino community in 
her town wants immigration laws enforced, particularly to deal with the 
problem of illegal gangs that are responsible for a lot of violent 
criminal activity. Since her son's murder, Angie Morfin has spoken out 
about the need for more border patrol agents and other enforcement to 
make her community safer so no other mother must suffer the loss she 
has.
  Thirteen-year-old Laura Ayala went missing in March, 2002, taken just 
a few feet from her home in Houston. At this writing there is no child, 
no body, although blood identified as being hers was identified in 2002 
in the car of a man believed to be connected with her abduction. 
Because of some evidence that she had been taken to Mexico, part of the 
search has been there.
  One complication was that Houston's policy of sanctuary, now get 
this, Mr. Speaker, Houston's policy of sanctuary which disallows police 
from investigating a person's citizenship status is in effect. Illegal 
alien Walter Alexander Sorto was in police hands for traffic tickets 
but could not be deported because of the sanctuary policy of the city 
of Houston. He is believed to be connected in Laura Ayala's 
disappearance which occurred several months after the ticket problem. 
Houston police officer John Nickell testified before Congress about how 
sanctuary laws inhibit the effectiveness of beat cops to deal with 
criminals and to prevent crime.
  Let me talk about this sanctuary policy for just a moment, because we 
had a fascinating vote on the House floor not too many nights ago. It 
was in the debate over the first appropriations bill for the Homeland 
Security Department, and I brought to the floor an amendment. The 
amendment said simply this, that if any city, like Houston, refuses to 
cooperate with the INS, has this sanctuary policy, then they could not 
apply for funds under the Homeland Security Act and any grant from any 
agency covered by the Homeland Security Department.
  Now, I remind my colleagues that any city wishing to obtain the 
grant, all they have to do, of course, is to change this policy of 
sanctuary for people who are breaking the law and living here 
illegally, but this amendment went down. I think we got 102 votes out 
of 435 votes, amazing, amazing as it was to me certainly that we could 
not even get a majority of the people in this body to agree that the 
laws that we have already passed in the United States should be 
enforced. Amazing.
  The danger on the highway from truckloads of illegal aliens in border 
areas has been increasing drastically. It is not unusual for a van full 
of aliens to speed down the road in the wrong direction, avoiding 
American law enforcement, causing death and injury to both American 
citizens and foreigners.
  One of the worst examples took place near San Diego June 25, 2002, 
where seven people were killed, at least 31 injured when a van tried to 
avoid a border checkpoint by turning the lights off and speeding 
against oncoming traffic in the wrong lane. Larry S. Baca of 
Albuquerque was killed when his Ford was smashed head-on by the 
immigrant van and knocked airborne.
  On March 10, 2003, two men were killed and 20 people injured when a 
stolen truck loaded with illegal aliens tried to outrun American 
authorities.
  Dana Pevia was kidnapped from her North Carolina school bus stop in 
1999 when she was only 11. In March, 2003, she was able to escape her 
captivity in Mexico and visit the American consulate in Guadalajara. 
The officials there contacted the National Center for Missing and 
Exploited Children and, through them, reached Dana's mother Wanda. 
Wanda returned home a few days later with her two children. The 
apparent kidnapper Hector Frausto, a Mexican construction worker, was 
arrested in North Carolina on March 27. Dana was evidently forcibly 
kept captive by his family in Mexico for much of that time. She was 
only able to get away because she had the help of a sympathetic 
neighbor.
  The unasked question is why the obvious suspect's family in Mexico 
was not investigated for 4 years. Was the unhelpful Mexican legal 
system being obstructionist yet again?
  Then there was the Marti family. Sean, just 24 years old, and his 
daughter Sage, who was 5 months old, were killed February 27 by a drunk 
driver, illegal alien, who was driving the wrong way on Highway 84 in 
Idaho. Natalie Marti was in a coma after the head-on crash and returned 
slowly to waking consciousness over a period of weeks. With coma 
victims, full mental functioning and memory can take much longer. She 
had attended college in Boise where she and Sean managed an apartment 
complex.
  Edgar Vasquez Hernandez, who worked as a house framer, was charged 
with two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of aggravated 
driving. Court records show Hernandez was intoxicated at the time of 
the crash. That story is repeated over and over and over again.
  Maria Suarez was only 16 and living in Los Angeles when she was sold 
for $200 to a 68-year-old man, Anselmo Covarrubias, who presented 
himself in the neighborhood as a brujo, a magician. He raped and abused 
her, utilizing brainwashing where he had said he had powers of the 
devil, as he had done to many Mexican girls. He held them in virtual 
slavery. Another woman bludgeoned Mr. Covarrubias to death, and Suarez 
hid the weapon but was not directly involved in the killing. Still, she 
served 22 years in prison and is slated to be released within a year.
  Phoenix police officer Robert Sitek was shot four times during a 
traffic stop altercation with an illegal alien that became violent.

                              {time}  2310

  He and his partner David Thwing were on routine patrol when a red 
truck cut off their squad car. When the officers stopped the truck, the 
driver began shooting. Officer Sitek was in cardiac arrest by the time 
he reached the hospital and lost a considerable amount of blood.
  Shooter Francisco A. Gallardo was a Mexican citizen who had recently 
completed a 7-year prison term for aggravated assault. He had been 
deported after his release but had returned to Arizona. He was shot and 
killed as he tried to escape by Officer Thwing.
  David Lazarus, a familiar name to the readers of the San Francisco 
Chronicle business pages, and the reporter appears occasionally on 
television news shows like This Week In Northern California on the 
local PBS affiliate.
  Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time for this evening, and I will 
return with

[[Page 18433]]

stories of many, many more people who are victims of our porous 
borders.

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