[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20060-20061]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          AMERICA'S STONEWALL

  (Mr. POE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, Members of Congress are looking for border 
security answers, and the American people are demanding them. But it 
seems we are being stonewalled by our own Border Patrol hierarchy.
  Get this, apparently our Border Patrol agents cannot talk or answer 
questions from Members of Congress without filing a lengthy detailed 
report, the same type of report they file when they arrest illegals, 
drug runners, or are even shot at by the Mexican military. This appears 
to intimidate our Border Patrol agents to not say a word about what is 
really going on.

[[Page 20061]]

  When I have been on the border, the Border Patrol agents were very 
reluctant to say anything except scripted answers. Now I know why. What 
does the Border Patrol hierarchy have to hide? Apparently the truth 
because that is all we are after.
  Why wouldn't homeland security want their agents talking to Members 
of Congress? Members of Congress are being forced to tear down the war 
of silence just to control our own border. The enemy is not Congress or 
the American people, it is the insurgents who infiltrate our border 
every day.
  And that's just the way it is.

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