Hearing of the Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism Subcommittee of the House Committee on Homeland Security - The Border Secuity Challenege: Recent Developments and Legislative Proposals

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REP. MARK EDWARD SOUDER (R-IN): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Securing our nation's borders is one of our most important tasks. Over the past seven years, and especially since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, a great deal has been done to increase resources and activities along the border and the interior of the country.

I've had the opportunity to travel a good portion of both borders, and seen for myself that despite the huge increases in resources that have been provided over the past few years, there is a lot more to be done. One area in particular where more needs to be done is our national parkland located on or near the border.

I'm also looking forward to discussing CBP efforts to work with the park service to enhance security in those areas, particularly in Texas. Related to that, I'm concerned with legislative proposals that result in limiting Border Patrol access to forest service areas of the border, by declaring illegal transit routes as wilderness areas.

Not only would that degregate the wilderness area, it would severely restrict our ability to stop illegal activities. We cannot afford to back down or scale back our efforts along the border. We need to move forward with getting agents into the field and limiting -- not limiting their access.

We need to compete -- complete fencing projects and find technology that will actually work for the Secure Border Initiative. We need to make sure that we eliminate invasive species like Carrizo cane and saltcedar that block the ability to see the illegal activities.

And we need to catch -- and we need to maintain the catch-and- return policy and not revert back to releasing illegal aliens. Additionally, more needs to be done on our interior enforcement programs especially related to cooperation with state and local law enforcement, and reforming our immigration court system.

There are initiatives that we need to be moving forward with rather than granting mass amnesty and repeating the mistakes of the past. As important as I believe it is for this Congress to pass legislation to provide tools and authority to the Department of Homeland Security to gain operational control over the border, it is better to do no legislation than bad legislation.

I would like to thank our colleagues from the House who have volunteered their time to provide some insight into existing legislative proposals to address border security and interior enforcement challenges. I hope this hearing is a first step in moving forward with bipartisan border security legislation.

To that end, I would like to point out several other bills that have been introduced by Republican members of the Homeland Security Committee and ask the chair to commit to considering these proposals, should the committee move forward with any border security legislation.

H.R. 2954 Secure Borders FIRST Act of 2007 is sponsored by Ranking Member Peter King. H. resolution 499, expressing the sense of the House that U.S. immigration laws should be enforced, is sponsored by Representative Lamar Smith, a senior member of this committee.

H.R. 3916, to provide for the next generation of border security technologies, is sponsored by Representative Ralph Hall and Representative Michael McCaul of this committee. H.R. 2561, Fast and Secure Travel at the Borders Act of 2007, is sponsored by Representative Dent of this committee.

H.R. 3496, Border Control and Contractor Accountability Act of 2007, is sponsored by Representative Ginny Brown-Waite of this committee. H.R. 2490, to conduct a pilot for the mobile biometric identification in maritime environment, is sponsored by Congressman Bilirakis of this committee, as is H.R. (4517 ?), the Student Visa Security Improvement Act.

I think it's important that we work how to move legislation forward and not get it bottlenecked in the committee. I look forward to working with you on this issue, and hope that we can give fair consideration to the variety of bills discussed here today and others that have been referred to by this committee, especially those by committee members.

One additional issue that I believe the committee urgently needs to consider, and I hope gets discussed during this hearing, is the current plan to end the deployment of the National Guard along the southwest border for Operation Jumpstart in July.

I'm very concerned from visits on the border and talking with the Border Patrol directly, that we will not have the Border Patrol agents in place to cover the missions. And this is the wrong time to open any new weaknesses along the border when we're in fact trying to brag about what we've done, to back down and retreat, as this is not the time to do that.

Thank you for yielding the time. I yield back any remaining.

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REP. SOUDER: Thank you, Madam Chairman.

And first I'd like to point out for the record that all the bills that I read at the beginning in my opening statement from members of this committee have been referred to this committee, as has Mr. Shuler's. The 9/11 commission blistered Congress, blistered Congress for having too many committees and no central jurisdiction.

Under Republicans we didn't get that done, under Democrats we didn't get that done. It is important that this committee lead, and that we should be the first out of the box if there is joint referral -- some of these things are joint referrals. But this committee needs to lead, because we're the number one Homeland Security Committee. I also want to share Chairman Reyes' concern about ports of entry.

I believe that has become a big problem, because some of this -- an agent is having to make decisions about the commerce in America and how much time he takes, because we simply don't have the resources and the infrastructure. Trucks get held up -- it's on the north and the south border. It isn't true to say that we haven't had terrorist intercepts on the south border. We are intercepting on both borders, and we just had the U.S. cabinet parliamentary session.

And we have one man who owns Ambassador Bridge who quite frankly has been giving political contributions in both parties that has held up infrastructure on the north border, and is becoming a -- particularly at the Detroit area in -- that this is another question, should private companies hold the chokepoint and then refuse to participate when the federal government needs to have additional -- this has to be investigated on what's going on in Detroit. We've had some problems up in Buffalo as well.

I want to ask Congresswoman Brown-Waite -- I have a problem in my district -- not getting into whether people are getting arrested just for being an illegal immigrant, but criminals. People committing criminal acts -- 144 -- as of two weeks ago, in my biggest county, Allen County, had been called in and not picked up according to Sheriff Fries.

And Noble County, a smaller county in north, 40 had been called in and not picked up. These are people who've been arrested for other things. In your bill you address some of this, and what I'm wondering is that some critics say that this puts local police in conflict with immigrant communities that this is too expensive to do. How do you respond to that?

REP. BROWN-WAITE: I am beginning to think that you have the same problem that I have and many other individuals who represent citizens in Congress have. And that is when they -- when ICE is called, they simply don't show up, or they wait until there are enough to show up to maybe fill a van.

This clearly would have local law enforcement working, which we can never have enough federal officials. We need the cooperation of the local police, the sheriff processes, we need to be working hand in hand. And many law enforcement officers want to help, but they also have strange budgets and want to be reimbursed.

If they send their officers through the 287 (g) program, obviously it's a couple of weeks that they are not working, but rather in training and that's across -- to a community they want to send them. My bill would actually have bonuses for those communities that are willing to step up and help the federal government in enforcing illegal immigrations.

I have the same problem and not only that, but when I wrote to the department because they closed their detention center in my area, which of course forced more people into the local jails, I was told, well, don't worry, because we have contracts with the local jails and we're paying them. The truth of the matter is the local jails had eliminated those contracts a long, long time ago.

And I got misinformation. But I know my district, and so I wrote back, and I challenged them. And I said I don't know whether you purposely lied to me or you're just out of touch or you got wrong information, but I'm sorry, that -- there is no -- there are no contracts in my county to house illegal immigrants.

REP. BILBRAY: Congressman, to reinforce your statement, though, if you go to ask the Border Patrol agents along the border and they -- and you want to win -- secure the border -- and this is where it comes, the Homeland Security. They will tell you -- rather than sending us another Border Patrol agent, we want -- if it's a choice between an ICE agent in your neighborhood or a Border Patrol down to San Ysidro, they will say send the ICE agent, because there is where you are addressing the problem that is not being looked at, at this time.

REP. SOUDER: And one of our problems here is we need to adequately fund this. We need to pass the bills and adequately fund it, because right now even local law enforcement people who are asking for the training, it doesn't do any good if nobody picks them up and there is no detention center. And these are criminal aliens beyond immigration law.

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REP. SOUDER: Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

First, I want to say that it is, for those who don't think it's dramatically changed on the border, because we've complained and complained about it, but it's dramatically changed.

There is no question that we are trying to accommodate trade the best we can, but there are more agents that we fence. We have electronic things that we never dreamed of having a few years ago.

And in my frustrations and others that it isn't sealed, and I personally think we haven't done this at a fast enough pace, which by the way is a high degree congressional funding, hasn't followed through nor has the administration requested adequate funding. It's not the people who are in front of us the problem.

But I think we do need to acknowledge what -- every day we become safer as a country. That doesn't mean -- it's like, well, when will we be totally safe? I don't think we'll ever be totally safe, but every day we are becoming safer as a country. And I think that's important to acknowledge.

I didn't like the way Project 28 started out, but hey, we are making progress with it, and it's going to be an addition to the system.

The UAVs along the border are just unbelievable. I saw that for the first time down at Fort Huachuca (ph). The ability that it gives along the border is tremendous. These hearings however aren't just to pat each other on the back, they are to basically probe where we have some concern.

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REP. SOUDER: Thank you.

And I want to -- I wasn't going to -- but I want to follow-up briefly on the cane, because it's pronounced, Laredo, but it's the whole border has some -- a big percentage of it has salt-cedar or other invasive species that anybody who thinks any fencing can be seen or any border patrol can see, I mean, as I've said before, as we were at Laredo, one of your agents came with the dog, and there were two people standing right next to your sector chief, and we didn't even see him in the brush.

The question is if it's going to take an environmental analysis, why can't they analyze some of the areas that have already done this. Why then if it's going to take so long to get it cleared, can't we clear for a bigger amount so we are not held up and then have to go to the next area with it.

It seems to me history can get in some too. And lastly, as a big believer that you can't incarcerate everybody, there should be work- release programs, why can't some of the work-release people cut the cane.

The key challenge we've had is how to keep the cane from coming back. And that's been the biggest reason we don't cut it. We think that the grass will work. But the key thing then is we have all this stuff along the border, we're not going to be able to take -- train border patrol agents and cut all this stuff, and anything -- it may not take a 100 years, but we're probably talking 10 or 15.

We need some creative ways to accelerate this process. But I have a few additional -- two additional comments at then a couple of questions that I'm thankful for the P-3s.

One point -- (inaudible) -- any of them flying, they are a critical part of our structure, and we need to continually upgrade. And my earlier concerns about ICE coverage is because I do believe from talking to people all along that in almost every sector, requests are coming in. There is a certain fatalism to it.

There are concerns about it, and we -- I wasn't necessarily criticizing how resources are to be used. I don't think you have enough resources that I was alluding to before the hearing started, and I want to put this on the record.

We have a short-term opportunity at Big Bend, Amistad Lake. The National Park Service has funds. They are willing to work with that. They are trying to make decisions.

They have been meeting because to put border patrol housing on national park land to have a joint operating center at Lake Amistad requires chaos, in political terms.

It's two different agencies. There's plenty of streams in each agency. We've got to get clearance in appropriations. I've talked to Congressman Dicks who is on both appropriations and this committee, and works with national parks in particular.

This is ridiculous that we can't get these kind of things worked out, and it's a classic thing that the 9/11 commission asked us for in the government, is that the jurisdiction thing seem to be slowing us down.

I hope you'll look into that and see because it particularly is important to the border patrol as we have huge sectors there.

One other thing related to Texas and the border patrol, it is outrageous in the Marfa Sector that where you have a checkpoint that the state of Texas will not lower the speed limit before that checkpoint endangering our border patrol agents.

And somewhere here we are going to have to have some accommodation of what national security needs are in relationship to local authority to put national -- people trying to protect national security at risk. And there has to be some way to address these questions.

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