Border Tunnel Task Force Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Border Tunnel Task Force Act.

Mr. Speaker, some of the most dangerous threats to our homeland are coming across our southern border. Drug smugglers are bringing dangerous narcotics and fueling America's epidemic of opioids. Human traffickers and transnational gangs like MS-13 are infecting our neighborhoods and endangering our kids. Even potential known or suspected terrorists are trying to make their way into America by exploiting our weak borders.

All of these groups are a serious national security concern. They are also very determined and creative, and one of the ways they avoid detection is by digging cross-border tunnels.

In August, a tunnel the length of two football fields was discovered below a closed fast-food restaurant in Arizona. This pathway was used to smuggle cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, and methamphetamines.

In 2016, 7 tons of marijuana and 1 ton of cocaine were found in a tunnel not far from San Diego. In my home State of Texas, a tunnel was discovered under the Rio Grande in El Paso back in 2010, also for smuggling drugs.

Unfortunately, the problem is not new. Authorities have discovered nearly 200 cross-border tunnels since 1990. We must do more to shut these tunnels down. This legislation will establish Border Tunnel Task Forces to enhance the ability of DHS to detect these tunnels and identify criminal networks.

These teams will be made up of ICE, CBP, and other Department personnel. They will be assisted by State, local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies. These teams will deploy to locations along the border where the greatest risks to our national security exist. In working together, they will be able to better secure our border and protect Americans from a growing list of threats.

This bill will minimize a unique, but serious, threat to our homeland. I want to thank my very dear friend and colleague, Congressman Sessions, for all of his hard work on this issue, and I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation.

Mr. Speaker, every day, we are seeing drugs coming in from Mexico, known or suspected terrorists, and dangerous opioids. We see fentanyl coming in from China into Mexico where they mix it with methamphetamines and heroin. It is really toxic, poisonous stuff. Fentanyl is so toxic that our canines die when they sniff it, yet that is being put into drugs coming across the U.S.-Mexico border into the United States to pollute and infect our children and our veterans. It is time for this to stop.

I hope that we will be able to take up, perhaps in November, our border security bill, which I think would go a long ways to getting this job done. In the meantime, this bill, I think, will go a long ways to stopping a very organized, sophisticated route of drugs, bad people, and bad things into the United States, and that is shutting down these tunnels.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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