Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
July 22, 1999 -- Page: S9016

MRS. HUTCHISON. I thank the Chair. If there comes a time when the Senator from New Hampshire needs to break in, I will be happy to yield.

I rise in support of the bill that is before us. It has been a tough bill. It is more than $888 million less than the appropriations bill that we enacted in last year, but it does provide sufficient resources. I believe Senator Gregg and Senator Hollings and their staffs have worked very hard to make sure we address the priorities for the Commerce, State, and Justice Departments and the very important issues with which they are dealing.

I have passed two amendments to the bill tonight. There will be another amendment that has already been accepted that will allow the INS Commissioner to provide a language proficiency bonus for people who are proficient in Spanish to be hired in the Border Patrol. Of course, if people are already proficient in Spanish, it will save the money it will take to train them in the second language. That amendment has been cleared on both sides. I appreciate it because I am looking for every way I can to increase the capability to recruit new Border Patrol agents who will be able to hit the ground running and help stop the influx of drugs and illegal immigration into our country.

I cannot imagine that we have continued to tell the INS that we want these Border Patrol agents to come on board, and we have not had the cooperation of the administration in either recruitment or retention. Certainly, I hope with this bill, which is much more narrow in its requirements, the Border Patrol will do what the Congress has mandated they do, and that is recruit and retain more Border Patrol agents so we can stop the influx of drugs into this country. As a matter of fact, $10 billion in marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines crossed our border last year. How in the world can we say that we have a handle on the sovereignty of our borders when we have $10 billion of illegal drugs flowing in in 1 year?

I am very pleased that the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Stevens, went to the Arizona border with Mexico during the Memorial Day recess. He was stunned at what he saw. I hope more Senators will go to the border so they will see the problem we are facing.

During the markup of the bill that is before us today, Senator Stevens said: God forbid that the day comes when we have to have fences and walls between the United States and Mexico.

I share his view. Mexico is our neighbor. They are strong cultural and historic ties between our two nations. I seek a border that is as open as possible, allowing people, goods, and services to move across the 2,000-mile-shared border quickly and efficiently. I am committed to putting in place the infrastructure, the bridges, the facilities, and the inspection personnel necessary for this to happen. I wish the President and this administration would work with us.

The realities are otherwise, however. In Texas and along the border, we are witnessing a lawlessness that we have never seen since the days of the frontier. It is important to put the drug threat in its proper context and to understand its full dimensions.

On March 24, 1999, Administrator Thomas Constantine of the Drug Enforcement Administration testified before our subcommittee. He said:

Most Americans are unaware of the vast damage that has been caused to their communities by international drug trafficking syndicates, most recently by organized crime groups headquartered in Mexico. At the current time, these traffickers pose the greatest threat to communities around the United States. Their impact is no longer limited to cities and towns on the border. Traffickers from Mexico are now routinely operating in the Midwest, the Southeast, the Northwest, and increasingly in the Northeastern portion of the United States.

Make no mistake: Drugs coming across the border are ending up on the streets of Manchester, NH; Columbia, SC; Baltimore, MD; and Denver, CO, and they are coming across in record numbers. In fiscal year 1998, there were 6,359 drug seizures along the Southwest border. The total value of these drug seizures was $1.28 billion, nearly $150 million more than last year. Nearly $1 billion of the drugs seized last year were on the Texas border, in the Border Patrol sectors there.

Drug-related violence along the Texas border continues to increase. Ranchers in Maverick County, 150 miles southwest of San Antonio, reported that armed traffickers in black, wearing camouflage clothing, passed through their properties after walking across the Rio Grande River. The situation is no better on the immigration side. More than 1.5 million illegal immigrants were apprehended along the Southwest border just last year.

Conservative estimates suggest that only one in four illegal aliens is apprehended. But the numbers hide the dark, evil side of this issue of alien smuggling, violent assault against migrating women, and other suffering.

I commend to my colleagues an article that appeared recently in the New York Times. Rick Lyman reported on a disturbing development where infants and young children, some possibly kidnapped and others who are rented, are used to trick border agents. INS has no facilities to house families, especially babies. So illegal aliens are simply released and asked to report for a later court date. The borrowed children are then shuffled back and forth across the border to be placed in the hands of others to make yet another treacherous, illegal crossing.

These examples highlight conditions along the border. They underscore that we have a moral obligation to provide the necessary resources to secure our border. That is why I find it incomprehensible that this administration has requested no new Border Patrol agents, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, or Customs agents in its budget recommendation to Congress this year. The 8,000 men and women serving in our Border Patrol are our Nation's first line of defense in the war on drugs and illegal immigration. Understanding this, Congress required, under the Illegal Immigration Act of 1996, that the Attorney General in each of the fiscal years 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001, shall increase the Border Patrol by not less than 1,000 full-time active duty Border Patrol agents within the INS. Unfortunately, our Nation's top law enforcement officer, Janet Reno, and the President opted not to abide by the law and put these agents in their budget.

This is not the first time the administration has not complied with this law. In 1997, the administration only requested 500 new agents instead of a thousand. Thank heavens, Senator Gregg and Senator Hollings have kept their commitment to secure our Nation's borders and provide $83 million in this year's budget to hire 1,000 agents.

Mr. President, this is so very important to fund these agencies. Again, Senator Gregg and Senator Hollings have gone a long way to pushing INS toward getting the 1,000 new Border Patrol agents. I have heard from every Border Patrol chief along the Southwest border, and all have told me that, yes, they can use better equipment. Better equipment helps them and it gives them a range much longer than one of them can cover. But what they need most, first and foremost, is manpower. They cannot operate the equipment, they cannot get to the places they need to be if they don't have enough Border Patrol agents, and they are woefully short.

So after talking to our drug czar, General McCaffrey, it is clear that we need more Border Patrol agents. He has said we need 20,000 Border Patrol agents in order to stop the flow of drugs across our Southwest border.

A University of Texas study done last year indicates that 16,000 agents are needed to do this job, and we only have 8,000.

With only 200 to 400 likely to be hired this year, we are not even making progress in the right correction.

I call on this administration to stop the excuses on why they can't recruit more Border Patrol agents, to stop refusing to even put them in their budget, and to come forward and say our border is a priority.

That is what I am asking this administration to do--to say that our border has to stop letting in illegal drugs that are preying on our children in Seattle, WA, in Chicago, IL, and in Augusta, ME. We have to stop this. The only way we are going to do it is to make it a priority.

I appreciate the leadership of Senator Gregg and Senator Hollings. They are making this a priority. The administration must come through and help us stop the sieve on our borders that is allowing drugs to come in.

I want to say in closing that Senator Kyl has worked very closely with me on these issue. Senator Kyl and I cosponsored the bill that would raise the pay of the Border Patrol agents so we could be in the recruitment game. He cosponsored my amendment on the floor today that would make this happen. He has been an important voice for effective law enforcement along the Southwest Border.

Mr. President, we cannot wait any longer. We must have action from this administration to beef up the Border Patrol, to beef up the Customs agents, to beef up the Drug Enforcement Agency, so that we can stop the influx of drugs into our country. We must get serious about it. That is what this bill does. But we must have the cooperation of this administration to do it.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.