Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
March 16, 2005 -- Page: S2828

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, this is an amendment cosponsored by myself and Senator Ensign. Senator Ensign has done so much work in this area on the intelligence reform bill, assuring there would be 2,000 authorized Border Patrol agents. We also have as cosponsors Senators Domenici, Cornyn, McCain, Kyl, and Feinstein. Mr. President, I would like to be notified at the end of 10 minutes, after which I will yield the rest of the time to the Senator from Nevada.

Earlier this month, FBI Director Mueller told Congress that people from countries with ties to al-Qaida are crossing into the United States through our porous border with Mexico.

Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security James Loy recently said that intelligence reports suggest al-Qaida is considering using the Southwest border to infiltrate into the United States, either with falsified documents or by crossing the border in other illegal ways.

We have today 11,000 Border Patrol agents for the borders between Mexico, the United States, and Canada, as well as in the Border Patrol centers that are throughout our country. It is clearly not enough.

Mr. President, 97 percent of illegal intruders are filtering through the Southwest border. But they do not stay in the South. They go throughout our country.

The Border Patrol does an amazing job. We applaud their work. But we need to give them more help. Recent stories and intelligence reports show that terrorists are planning to use our border, and it should be a wakeup call.

Since 2001, 1,300 agents have been added to the force. But we have 6,900 miles of border with Canada and Mexico. My State of Texas alone has over 1,200 miles of border with Mexico. In most places there are no fences. In Texas, the Rio Grande River can sometimes be waded across or is completely dry.

We are seeing an increase of 137 percent in immigrants who are from countries other than Mexico. These immigrants, which are called OTMs, ``other than Mexicans,'' are coming into our country in the largest numbers we have ever seen. But due to a lack of resources, they are often caught and released, or they are not caught at all.

Recognizing our serious border vulnerability, Congress passed the intelligence reform bill last year and authorized an increase of 10,000 Border Patrol agents over 5 years. It included provisions to add 8,000 detention beds and 800 additional interior investigators. Unfortunately, the budget before us only allocated enough to cover 210 agents, 143 investigators, and 1,920 beds for detention.

The Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently said:

We do not have enough agents; we don't have enough technology to give us the security we need.

Let me give you some examples of recent happenings.

In Detroit, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani was indicted in the Eastern District of Michigan on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to Hezbollah. Kourani was already in custody for entering the country illegally through Mexico and was involved in fundraising activities on behalf of Hezbollah.

The two groups of Arab males were discovered by patrol guards from Willcox, AZ. One field agent said:

These guys didn't speak Spanish, and they were speaking to each other in Arabic. It's ridiculous that we don't take this more seriously. We're told not to say a thing to the media.

This is a field agent for the Border Patrol.

Last July, in Burlington, VT, police raided an international syndicate that forced Asian women to work as sex slaves. The women told investigators they had been smuggled from Asia to Mexico, entering the United States through Arizona, Texas, and other States. They ended up in Vermont.

Take the example of the capture of terrorist suspect Jose Padilla. The Justice Department says Padilla and an accomplice planned to enter the United States through Mexico to blow up apartment buildings in major cities such as New York.

Or the case of suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent Mohammed Junaid Babar, who told investigators of a scheme to smuggle terrorists across the Mexican border. He is tied to a terror plot to carry out bombings and assassinations in London.

Further stories indicate there are real concerns about terrorists entering our country through the southern border.

Along the Mexican border there have been stories of suspicious items picked up by local residents, including Muslim prayer rugs and notebooks written in both Arabic and Spanish. These items came from OTMs and a subcategory called special interest aliens, who are illegals coming from terrorist-sponsoring countries.

Intelligence reports suggesting that 25 Chechen terrorism suspects have illegally entered the United States from Mexico have refocused attention on a porous border from which many believe the next major attack on Americans could come.

Patrol agents told one Arizona newspaper that 77 males ``of Middle Eastern descent'' were apprehended in June of last year in 2 separate incidents. All were trekking through the mountains and are believed to have been part of a larger group of illegal immigrants. Many were released pending immigration hearings.

Also last July, an Egyptian man United States authorities described as one of their most wanted smugglers of humans was arrested on charges of operating a ring that illegally brought people from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries to the United States. The indictment says Abdallah and his associates would direct people seeking to reach the United States to travel to one of several Latin American countries, and from there to Guatemala. They would then be transported to America through Mexico in return for payments of thousands of dollars in smuggling fees.

The amendment we are offering tonight will add $315 million to the President's request for the Border Patrol. This will provide for the training and equipping of 2,000 agents. This would be the full amount authorized and will have a dramatic impact on the security-related problems we have on the border.

In order to maintain a fiscally responsible bill, and not increase the top cap of discretionary spending, we are offsetting this increase with an equal reduction in the international affairs section of the budget because protecting our borders from foreign threats is an international affair.

Today, with my colleagues Senators Ensign, Domenici, Cornyn, McCain, Kyl, and Feinstein, I am calling on Congress to do more than add 210 Border Patrol agents that are in the underlying budget. We are asking for the full contingent authorized of 2,000. This is still not enough. And I hope we will be able to come back next year and get up to the full 2,000 again.

But the warning flag has gone up. We must heed the warnings we have been given. Every incident I mentioned is a call to the United States to make sure that our borders with Mexico are secure. We need more Border Patrol agents and more detention facilities to make our borders secure.

The people of our country deserve this security, and our amendment will take one step in the right direction. I hope my colleagues will work with me to pass this in the budget and then later in the Appropriations bill. We must do everything to heed the warning call we have gotten.

When I first came to Congress, we doubled our Border Patrol agents from 3,000 to 6,000. We were a country that was porous, both on the borders of Canada and Mexico. But, clearly, we have had more and more influx of illegal aliens that have become a burden in many parts of our country, and now we have a security threat from people who do not live on our borders but are using our borders as a conduit to come into our country. The examples that Senator Ensign and I have just mentioned, where we are finding Muslim prayer rugs and instructions in Arabic on how to cross the border of the Rio Grande River, are just wake-up calls that we cannot avoid. So we are, hopefully, going to have the support of Congress to add a full 2,000 Border Patrol agents.

But as important as it is to catch these people, we also need to be able to detain them. Today, many times, because we have no detention facilities, we will say to the people: You must promise to come back in 60 days for your hearing on illegally entering this country.

Well, guess how many come back. Ten percent come back for their hearing. What happened to the other 90 percent? We are finding them in places such as Vermont, New York, and Detroit, MI. That is what happened to them.

Mr. President, it would be irresponsible not to take this threat seriously. We need these Border Patrol agents. We need the detention facilities. We need to keep these people incarcerated to find out why they are trying to enter our country illegally. Every country has the right as a sovereign nation to protect their borders. It is our responsibility to do it.

I hope my colleagues will help us pass this amendment and do the right thing for homeland security. This is a priority, and it must be a priority accepted in this budget.