Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
April 29, 1999 -- Page: S4440

BORDER PATROL RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION ACT OF 1999

MRS. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President. I thank Senator Kyl for his leadership on this bill that we have just introduced.

Senator Kyl and I, along with Senators Domenici, Gramm, McCain, and Bingaman, have been very concerned about the Border Patrol issue that faces our border States. In fact, we were stunned this week to learn that though Congress has authorized and authorized funding for 1,000 new Border Patrol agents that in fact only 200 to 400 are coming on line this year.

Mr. President, that is stunning. That is stunning when you consider that last year the Border Patrol apprehended 1.5 million persons illegally crossing the border, and fully half of those were at my State of Texas. In fact, the McAllen Border Patrol sector, which includes Brownsville, Harlingen and McAllen, had the largest number of drug seizures of all Border Patrol Sectors in the United States--1,610 drug seizures just in that one sector. The drugs apprehended have a value of over $410 million. Two Border Patrol agents in the McAllen sector lost their lives last year in a raid of a drug trafficker's hideout. It was the first time Border Patrol agents had been killed during such a raid.

Senator Abraham held a hearing this week, and the Chief of the Border Patrol told us that he has not been able to recruit and retain and, in fact, is losing 10 percent of the agents. For every one that we are bringing on, we are losing two, because our Border Patrol agents are capped at a journeymen-9 level. That translates to roughly $34,000 a year for an agent that has several years of experience. For an agent, that is certainly a job of law enforcement at its toughest.

Under the bill that we have just introduced, the agents would be eligible to be paid at a journeymen-11 level, which is approximately a $7,000 increase.

This pay raise is also consistent with the pay of other law enforcement agencies that work along the border. One significant problem for the Border Patrol has been that many agents go to work for the Customs Service, or the DEA when they reach the cap. So they get to their cap, their experience, and they go over to another Federal agency that pays better.

We must solve this discrepancy among Federal agencies in the same place that are doing similar kinds of tough duty work for hazardous pay. Yet, the Border Patrol is $7,000 less than Customs and DEA agents. We must correct this discrepancy if we are going to get control of our borders, which are a sieve right now with drugs moving through at an alarming rate.

This is not just a Texas-Arizona-New Mexico-California problem. The drugs that come in from our borders go right up into Ohio, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oregon--all over our country, because we don't have the proper control of our border.

Mr. President, there is not a higher priority for the Federal Government than to have the sovereign borders of the United States safe from illegal drugs coming into our country, and most certainly illegal immigrants that have not gone through the proper procedures so that we know who is coming into our country and what their record is so that we have the control that any sovereign nation would have.

Mr. President, this is an emergency. It is why Senator Kyl and I have introduced this legislation today, because we are in a crisis. This is a war. It is a war on drugs, and we are losing. We are losing our young people in this country. Part of the problem is that we are not putting the resources into law enforcement.

I have to say, Mr. President, that I am disappointed to the maximum that our INS has money from Congress and authorization from Congress to hire 1,000 agents and they have only been able to come up with 200 to 400 agents this year. That means we are 600 to 800 short, as we speak, from what was allocated this year, and which was given priority by Congress. I think the INS needs to make this a priority. We are going to give them the pay increases with the bill that we have just introduced today.

Senator Gregg, who has been a strong supporter of our efforts to beef up the border, has said he will work with us to reprogram money from this year's budget for these pay increases so that we will hopefully be able to do this on an expedited basis by October 1 of this year.

Hopefully, we will be able to retain agents knowing that this pay raise is in the pipeline. But, Mr. President, it also takes an effort by the INS to make it a priority to fill these slots, because if they don't look at a little more creative approach to recruiting, the $7,000 increase is not going to be enough.

I am at my wit's end. Senator Kyl, Senator McCain, Senator Gramm, Senator Domenici, and Senator Bingaman are at their wit's end, and certainly Senator Feinstein and Senator Boxer are at their wit's end with promises made and not fulfilled by the Border Patrol to keep the illegal drugs out of our country that are preying on our young people.

This is a priority. It is an emergency. It is a war that we are losing, and we are going to try to fix it. But we must have the support of the INS to do it. We are going to give them pay raises. We are going to create another office in the Border Patrol for recruitment and retention to tell us what else we need to do, and we are going to fix this problem if we can have a hand-to-hand relationship with the INS and the Border Patrol.

It is inexcusable that they did not come to us earlier to tell us they were this far behind. We are going to fix this problem. We are not going to sit back and let the children of our country be absorbed in drugs that are illegally crossing the border and made available to young people who are not yet mature enough to know what to do when they are approached.

Mr. President, we are trying to do our part. I call on the INS and the Border Patrol and this administration to do their part, because we are not going to take it anymore. We are going to solve this problem. We are going to put the resources in it. If the INS will put those resources to work and be creative and innovative and dogged in their determination, we will make a difference, but we can't do it without their commitment.

Thank you, Mr. President.