Threat to Our Southern Border
THREAT TO OUR SOUTHERN BORDER -- (House of Representatives - June 09, 2005)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I have spoken many times on this floor concerning the need to secure our borders. We must do so if we are going to have any kind of responsible immigration policy and retain our national sovereignty. We know with somewhere between 36,000 and 50,000 addition al enforcement personnel on our southern borders, we can catch virtually all of the potential terrorists and drug dealers trying to enter this country illegally.
But we now find that other-than-Mexican illegals, or OTMs as they are referred to by our Border Patrol, have discovered a large loophole in our law. Under this loophole, OTMs can cross our border illegally and be apprehended by our border patrol. The border patrol is then forced to give them paperwork allowing them to bypass all other immigrati on checkpoints and virtually release them into our country.
This criminal scheme is not the fault of some quirk in U.S. law. It is being forced on our border patrol by international law which we are allowing to undermine our rule of law, national immigration policy, our Constitution, and our sovereignty. International law says illegal immigrants must either be deported to their country of origin or placed in detention. If there is no room in detention, they must be released on bail with a promise that t hey return later for trial.
There is never any room in detention any more for the millions of illegals violating our southern border every year. And since these illegals are not Mexican, our border patrol is required to buy them airfare back to Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, China, Iraq, and on and on. So they sign an agreement to show in court in 30 days and are released.
With that paper in hand, they can pass legally through all other border patrol checkpoints and vanish into cities in America. We have caught 90,000 OTMs since October 1, 2004, and 98 percent have failed to show back up in court. Once hidden in large immigration communities inside our country with new false identification, it becomes virtually impossible to apprehend them.
Mr. Speaker, I have stood here before and called for deploying 36,000 troops to our border to effectively close it. But with this situation in place, we could send 1 million troops to our borders, and it would not make any difference. Border patrol s ays these people swim across the Rio Grande and come looking for our officers with a demand ``permiso,'' for the warrant that gives them a free pass into our Nation illegally.
Mr. Speaker, we need a new law right now. Anyone who crosses our border with Mexico illegally should be considered a citizen of Mexico for enforcement purposes. They should be returned there or incarcerated here immediately. This is not the United Nations or WTO. We represent the people of our districts. We are responsible to the people of the United States and are sworn to defend our Constitution. We have an inherent God-given right to national sovereignty, and this House must not stand by while foreign nations undermine our laws and our independence.
Mr. Speaker, I will be back next week to further this conversation.
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