[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 19]
[House]
[Page 26168]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE BACK DOOR IS OPEN

  (Mr. POE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, the Government Accountability Office is in the 
border crossing business. Like the illegals, drug dealers, smugglers 
that cross both our southern and northern borders at will, GAO 
investigators recently crossed undetected from Canada into the United 
States in three different areas with, get this, red duffel bags of 
radioactive material, detonators and narcotics. They crossed with no 
problem, and no border agent was anywhere in sight.
  On the 5,000-mile Canadian border, there are no more than 250 border 
agents on duty at any given time according to a deputy chief of the 
Border Patrol. It sounds easy to slip back and forth unnoticed across 
the border.
  A GAO investigator said that ``there were substantial vulnerabilities 
on the northern border to terrorists and criminals entering the United 
States undetected''. While America's watching the front door to illegal 
crossing at the southern border, the back door is wide open to unwanted 
illegal guests on the northern border.
  Homeland Security needs to get serious about homeland security and 
shut the open doors to our homeland.
  And that's just the way it is.

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