[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6877]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          HELP FOR THE BORDER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say that Mr. Poe of Texas, my good 
friend who just spoke, he added a little bit of levity, but it was very 
important. The point that he was making, in that we have the ability in 
this country to really deal with things like agriculture and insects 
that might come in and contaminate our crops, but we have a serious, 
serious problems on the 1,980-mile border between us and Mexico.
  The administration has cut some of the money from the whole project 
of putting fences and more broad Border Patrol agents on that border. 
And it's a war zone, as Mr. Poe has said. Mr. Poe is the leader in 
pointing out the problems with what's going on on the border between 
Texas and Mexico, as well as the border all the way between the United 
States and the whole country of Mexico.
  So I'd just like to say if I were talking to the President or anybody 
in his administration, listen to Mr. Poe and the guys who've been down 
there on the border. They know. The sheriffs and the police in Arizona 
and all of them know that this is a war zone. American lives are at 
risk. And we're not doing anything from the Federal level to deal with 
the problem.
  As Mr. Poe said in a letter that he wrote that I cosigned the other 
day, they need to send, if necessary, the National Guard down there to 
augment the Border Patrol agents, some of whom are at risk every single 
day, every single night. And so if I were talking to the administration 
on behalf of my good friend, Mr. Poe, and all of us that are concerned 
about the border and the illegals that are coming in by the thousands 
and now into the millions over the years, we really need to do 
something to protect that border. No more talking about it. Let's do 
it. Let's send the National Guard down there with the ability to do 
whatever is necessary when they're dealing with armed drug dealers or 
people coming across the border who may mean to do harm to American 
citizens.
  If we give them that right and we put the National Guard down there 
with the ability to defend themselves against these people that are 
coming across the border, we can sew that thing up and we can stop the 
illegal immigration. Then, once we secure the border, we can start 
talking about a real, viable immigration reform bill. But until we 
secure the border, we shouldn't be talking about that. That's the 
number one objective.

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