[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2005, Book II)]
[October 18, 2005]
[Pages 1559-1563]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks on Signing the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations
Act, 2006
October 18, 2005
Thank you all. Please be seated. Thanks for coming. Welcome to the
White House.
The most solemn duty of the President and the Congress is to protect
the American people. To help meet this responsibility, we created the
Department of Homeland Security. This Department united 22 Federal
agencies under a single command with a clear mission, to protect the
American homeland.
To protect our homeland, we tore down legal and bureaucratic walls
that separated our intelligence agents from our law enforcement
officers. We've disrupted terrorist planning and financing as a result
of the reforms. We've used the PATRIOT Act to break up terror cells and
prosecute terrorist operatives and supporters. At the same time, the
Department of Homeland Security, by working with the United States
Congress, has increased the number of people guarding our borders,
hardened security at our airports and seaports and bridges and tunnels
and water treatment facilities and nuclear plants. We've helped give
those most likely to encounter terrorists, our partners in local and
State government, the tools they need to do their job.
The bill I sign today supports our ongoing efforts to protect our
homeland with $30.8 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal year
2006, an increase of $1.8 billion over the 2005 levels. This bill will
help us identify terrorists seeking to enter our country, safeguard our
cities against weapons of mass destruction, and better prepare the
Federal Government to respond to catastrophic attack.
The bill also includes $7.5 billion in vital funding to address the
serious problem of illegal immigration. We're going to get control of
our borders. We're going to make this country safer for all our
citizens.
I want to thank Secretary Mike Chertoff
for the job he's doing. I want to welcome Josh Bolten, Director of OMB. He's the money man. [Laughter] I
appreciate Ambassador John Negroponte for
joining us, the Director of National Intelligence; Director Porter
Goss of the CIA; Vice Admiral Scott
Redd, Director of the National
Counterterrorism Center.
I want to thank the Members of Congress who are up here with me:
Thad Cochran of Mississippi,
chairman of the Appropriations Committee; Senator Judd
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Gregg, chairman of the Appropriations
Subcommittee on Homeland Security; Senator Jon Kyl, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
I want to thank the Members of the House who've joined me up here:
Congressman Hal Rogers, chairman of the
Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security; Congressman Pete
King; Congressman John Shadegg; Congressman Chet Edwards, who happens to be my Congressman; Congressman
Sanford Bishop; Congressman Sheila
Jackson-Lee. Thank you all for joining
us. I appreciate so many Members of the House and Senate who have joined
us here today. Thank you for working hard on this good bill.
I appreciate Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Rebekah Salazar, who's joined us on stage--thank you--Assistant Chief
Patrol Agent Elizabeth Briones as well as
Patrol Agent in Charge Felix Chavez. They all
work for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Thanks for representing
the good folks who--[applause]. I appreciate those first-responders
who've joined us today. Thanks for bringing honor to the--[applause].
To defend this country, we've got to enforce our borders. When our
borders are not secure, terrorists and drug dealers and criminals find
it easier to come to America. This administration is going to work with
Congress to make sure we do our job, and that starts with having a clear
strategy. And here's how the strategy has got to be: We've got to
strengthen security along our borders to stop people from entering
illegally. In other words, we've got to stop people from coming here in
the first place. Secondly, we must improve our ability to find and
apprehend illegal immigrants who have made it across the border. If
somebody is here illegally, we've got to do everything we can to find
them. And thirdly, we've got to work to ensure that those who are caught
are returned to their home countries as soon as possible. The bill I
sign today will provide critical resources for all these efforts.
For the past 4 years, we've worked with Congress to implement the
strategy. To stop illegal immigrants from coming into the country, we've
increased manpower; we've upgraded technology; and we've improved the
physical barriers along our border. In other words, we've worked
together to implement the strategy.
Since I've been to office, we've increased funding for border
security by 60 percent, and we've hired more than 1,900 new Border
Patrol agents. We've deployed new technology to help our agents do their
job, from unmanned aircraft to ground censors to infrared cameras. We've
made better use of physical structure to help our agents do their job.
We've taken steps to complete a 14-mile fence running along the San
Diego border with Mexico.
Stopping people from crossing our borders illegally is only part of
the strategy. The other part of our strategy is enforcing our
immigration laws. Since 2001, we've increased funding for immigration
enforcement by 35 percent. We've added nearly 1,000 new agents and
criminal investigators to help us find and return illegal immigrants.
We've targeted violent criminal gangs, whose members are here illegally.
Under a new program launched in February, our Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agents have arrested nearly 1,400 illegal immigrant
gang members. And this country owes them a debt of gratitude for working
so hard to protect our citizens. We're going after criminal
organizations and ``coyotes'' that traffic in human beings. These people
are the worst of the worst. They prey on innocent life. They take
advantage of people who want to embetter their own lives.
And we're working hard. In Arizona, we prosecuted more than 2,300
people for smuggling drugs, guns, and illegal immigrants across our
borders. And I want to thank the Federal officers as well as the
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folks from Arizona, both local and State, who have made this kind of
work possible.
As part of our enforcement efforts, we're working to send the
illegal immigrants we catch back to their home countries as soon as
possible. It's one thing to catch them; it's the next thing to get them
back home. To make progress--to make our progress more effective, we're
going to work with--we'll continue to work with foreign governments to
have their counsel officers review cases and issue travel documents more
quickly--in other words, to expedite the return.
These efforts are getting results. Since 2001, we've removed several
million illegal immigrants from the United States, including nearly
300,000 with criminal records. Our Border Patrol and Immigration
Enforcement officers are really doing good work. Yet today we capture
many more illegal immigrants than we can send home, especially non-
Mexicans. And one of the biggest reasons for that is we don't have
enough bed space in our detention facilities. When there's no bed space
available, non-Mexicans who are caught entering our country illegally
are given a slip that tells them to come back for a court appearance.
And guess what? They don't come back.
And so this bill--and by the way, as a result of that--this process,
the lack of beds, the lack of detention facility, we return home only
30,000 of the 160,000 non-Mexican illegal immigrants we caught coming
through our Southwest border. And the system is not fair to those who
are working the border. You got agents working hard to do their job, the
job Americans expect; 160,000 non-Mexican illegal immigrants were
caught, yet only 30,000 of them went home.
And so the bill I sign today--and I appreciate Congress's work on
this matter--will help us expand our reach and effectiveness in two
important ways. First, the bill provides more than $2.3 billion for the
Border Patrol, so we can keep more illegal immigrants from getting into
this country. In other words, we're expanding the number of agents in a
rational, planned way. This bill gives $139 million to improve our
technology and intelligence capabilities, including portable imaging
machines and cameras and sensors and automated targeting systems that
focus on high-risk travelers and goods. In other words, we've increased
the number of people, but we've given them new technology so they can
better do their job.
The bill also includes $82 million to improve and expand Border
Patrol stations and $70 million to install and improve fencing,
lighting, vehicle barriers, and roads. What I'm saying is Congress did
good work in helping us build a smarter system, so we can say to the
American people, ``We're doing our job of securing our border.''
Secondly, the bill provides $3.7 billion for immigration and customs
enforcement, so we can find and return the illegal immigrants who are
here. This bill will fund the hiring of 100 new immigration enforcement
agents and 250 criminal investigators.
As a result of the bill I'm about to sign, we're going to add nearly
2,000 new beds to our detention facilities. That will bring the number
of beds up to nearly 20,000. This will allow us to hold more non-Mexican
illegal immigrants while we process them through a program we call
``expedited removal.'' Putting more of these non-Mexican illegal
immigrants through expedited removal is crucial to ending the problem of
catch-and-release. As Secretary Chertoff
told the Senate earlier this morning, our goal is clear, to return every
single illegal entrant, with no exceptions. And this bill gets us on the
way to do that.
For Mexicans who cross into America illegally, we have a different
strategy. Now most of the 900,000 illegal immigrants from Mexico who are
caught each year are immediately escorted back across the border. The
problem is, these illegal immigrants are able to find another ``coyote''
or human smuggler, and they come right back in. One part of the solution
is a program called
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``interior repatriation,'' where we fly or bus Mexican illegal
immigrants all the way back to their hometowns. See, many of these folks
are coming from the interior of Mexico. And so the farther away from the
border we send them, the more difficult it will be for them to turn
around and cross right back into America. By returning Mexicans to their
homes, far away from desert crossings, we're helping to save lives.
These efforts are going to help us enforce our borders, and I want to
thank you for your good work.
As we improve and expand our efforts to secure our borders, we must
also recognize that enforcement work--that enforcement cannot work
unless it is part of a larger comprehensive immigration reform program.
If an employer has a job that no American is willing to take, we need to
find a way to fill that demand by matching willing employers with
willing workers from foreign countries on a temporary and legal basis.
The best way to do that is through a temporary-worker program that gives
those workers we need a legal, honest way to come into our country and
to return home. I'm going to work with Members of Congress to create a
program that can provide for our economy's labor needs without harming
American workers, without providing amnesty, and that will improve our
ability to control our borders.
You see, we got people sneaking into our country to work. They want
to provide for their families. Family values do not stop at the Rio
Grande River. People are coming to put food on the table. But because
there is no legal way for them to do so, through a temporary-worker
program, they're putting pressure on our border. It makes sense to have
a rational plan that says, ``You can come and work on a temporary basis,
if an employer can't find an American to do the job.'' It makes sense
for the employer. It makes sense for the worker, and it makes sense for
those good people trying to enforce our border. The fewer people trying
to sneak in to work means it's more likely we're going to catch
smugglers--drug smugglers and terrorists and gun runners.
A critical part of any temporary-worker program is work site
enforcement. To deal with employers who violate our immigration law,
this bill strengthens our enforcement capabilities by adding new agents
and doubling their resources. We've got to crack down on employers who
flout our laws. And we will give honest employers the tools they need to
spot fake documents and ensure that their workers are respecting our
laws. America is a country of laws, and we're going to uphold our laws
for the good of the citizens of this country.
The bill I'm about to sign funds a lot of important programs. It
helps people do the job they've been called on to do, which is to
protect the American people. A key component of this bill is to make
sure we enforce the borders of the United States of America. And I want
to thank the authors of the bill, those who have worked hard to get this
bill to my desk, for putting forth a rational plan, a way to do our job.
We've got a lot of work to do in this country. There are enemies
still out there who want to hurt us. But this bill is a step toward all
of us, Republicans and Democrats, being able to say to the American
people, ``We're coming together to do the best job we can possibly do to
protect this country.''
Again, I want to thank the Members for being here. Thanks for your
good work. May God bless you, and may God continue to bless our country.
Note: The President spoke at 1:33 p.m. in the East Room at the White
House. H.R. 2360, approved October 18, was assigned Public Law No. 109-
90. The Office of the Press Secretary also released a Spanish language
transcript of these remarks.
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