Help For The Border

Floor Speech

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say that Mr. Poe of Texas, my good friend who just spoke, he added a little bit of levity, but it was very important. The point that he was making, in that we have the ability in this country to really deal with things like agriculture and insects that might come in and contaminate our crops, but we have a serious, serious problems on the 1,980-mile border between us and Mexico.

The administration has cut some of the money from the whole project of putting fences and more broad Border Patrol agents on that border. And it's a war zone, as Mr. Poe has said. Mr. Poe is the leader in pointing out the problems with what's going on on the border between Texas and Mexico, as well as the border all the way between the United States and the whole country of Mexico.

So I'd just like to say if I were talking to the President or anybody in his administration, listen to Mr. Poe and the guys who've been down there on the border. They know. The sheriffs and the police in Arizona and all of them know that this is a war zone. American lives are at risk. And we're not doing anything from the Federal level to deal with the problem.

As Mr. Poe said in a letter that he wrote that I cosigned the other day, they need to send, if necessary, the National Guard down there to augment the Border Patrol agents, some of whom are at risk every single day, every single night. And so if I were talking to the administration on behalf of my good friend, Mr. Poe, and all of us that are concerned about the border and the illegals that are coming in by the thousands and now into the millions over the years, we really need to do something to protect that border. No more talking about it. Let's do it. Let's send the National Guard down there with the ability to do whatever is necessary when they're dealing with armed drug dealers or people coming across the border who may mean to do harm to American citizens.

If we give them that right and we put the National Guard down there with the ability to defend themselves against these people that are coming across the border, we can sew that thing up and we can stop the illegal immigration. Then, once we secure the border, we can start talking about a real, viable immigration reform bill. But until we secure the border, we shouldn't be talking about that. That's the number one objective.

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