[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 21]
[House]
[Page 29359]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            BORDER SECURITY

  Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time 
of the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Texas?
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Culberson) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to bring to the attention 
of the American people the reasons why it is so important the House 
acted yesterday to pass such a strong border enforcement law and order 
bill that will bring law and order to our southern and northern 
borders, but in particular the southern border.
  I am a native Houstonian, born and raise in Houston; but I had no 
idea until recently the scale of violence our law enforcement officers, 
Border Patrol agents, our local sheriffs are facing along the Rio 
Grande, and it is the result of a lack of enforcement of our 
immigration laws, as the Border Patrol has been pulled back and our 
border has been unprotected at the same time the narcoterrorists and 
the drug lords have figured out that there is a vacuum there.
  A war has developed between the gulf cartel of drug lords and the 
megacartel. Now, the megacartel extends its territory essentially from, 
and I am going to use these, Mr. Speaker, to help illustrate for people 
what I am talking about, this war between the megacartel, the drug 
lords, and the gulf cartel, is a full-scale battle. The lawlessness is 
so severe, Mr. Speaker, that the sheriffs in Laredo will not even 
approach the river at night without turning off all their lights.
  And, in fact, when I went down to the river in mid-October with a 
group of sheriffs, the sheriff sent a marked sheriff's deputy vehicle 
ahead of me down to the river with the lights out. I asked, why are you 
sending him ahead of me with the lights out? And the response was, 
Congressman, we want him to get shot at instead of you. Which really 
alarmed me. And I asked the sheriff, please tell that young man to turn 
on the strobe lights on top of his vehicle. They sort of laughed at me 
and said, Congressman, you do not understand. The violence is so bad 
down here on the river, that if that deputy sheriff turns on his strobe 
lights, it will make him a better target and he is very likely to be 
machine gunned immediately.

                              {time}  2000

  This is what our law enforcement officers face every day, and the 
type of people that they are dealing with is shown in this photograph 
here. This is a photograph of one of the military style commandos that 
are being used by the Gulf Cartel as their army of enforcers. This is a 
photograph of a Guatemalan special forces, they call them kabiles, and 
their motto, which is difficult to see here at the bottom, but let me 
read it for the viewers. Their motto is: If I go forward, follow me. If 
I stop, urge me on. And if I turn back, kill me.
  The Gulf Cartel is also using a group of commandos trained in the 
United States at Fort Bliss called the Zetas that were part of the 
Mexican army originally, and their commander and 31 of their top troops 
went over the drug lords, bought out by the drug lords, and the Zetas 
are now running at least one and probably up to four narcoterrorist 
training camps in northern Mexico right across the river from Texas. 
There is one operating out in the open near Matamoros, maybe two or 
three others in the immediate area, one near Rio Bravo, and another 
apparently has opened up recently near Del Rio. These are 
narcoterrorist training camps run and operated by the Zetas and the 
Gulf Cartel to train and equip these commandos to enter the United 
States to deliver the loads of weapons or drugs and kill anybody that 
attempts to stop them.
  Let me show people the effect of just a typical arrest. Now, this is 
just another week at the office for our law enforcement officers on the 
Texas border. This is on September 27, 2004. This occurred in Nuevo 
Laredo, just across the river, and this is spilling over in the United 
States because the drug Lords are fighting over Nuevo Laredo, the 
Nation's largest inland port, and whichever drug cartel controls Nuevo 
Laredo will control the most profitable smuggling center in the United 
States.
  On September 27 of 2004, this gun battle ensued, and as a result of 
this gun fight, there were captured and in this one fight, they found 
four AK-47 machine guns, two AR-15 rifles, ten grenades, a number of 
pistols, 12 40-millimeter grenade rounds, and 12 40-millimeter grenade 
launchers. Now, these devices here across the bottom are 40-millimeter 
grenade launchers that are supposed to be attached to M-16 rifles, but 
the Zetas, the drug lords' army, have converted them to handheld 
pistols, and this is standard equipment that are now issued to these 
commandos as they deliver their loads of weapons, drugs and even 
terrorists. The Customs Immigration Service knows that the terrorists 
are using the smuggling routes established by the drug lords to smuggle 
Islamic terrorists into the United States. I had the FBI director 
testify to my committee under oath that there are individuals from 
countries with known al Qaeda connections changing their Islamic 
surname to Hispanic, adopting fake Hispanic identities and entering the 
United States pretending to be Hispanic immigrants and disappearing. 
This is going on in large numbers. These narcoterrorist armies, this 
is, again, just one arrest; these 40-millimeter grenades launchers can 
be held as pistols, and they are used to shoot at law enforcement 
officers, anybody who attempts to stop them.
  This is a photograph of some of the vehicles after this particular 
gun battle. This arrest took place, and I think the date is on here. 
This shows some of the 40-millimeter grenades that are used as time-
delayed bombs.
  I applaud the House for passing this strong bill so we can have law 
and order on the border instead of the law of Plata o Plomo.

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