Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 2008

Floor Speech

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008

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Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from California is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. BILBRAY. To the gentleman from West Virginia, let me just say I know your concern about the process here. But I think that if you reviewed this situation and the process these two Border Patrol agents went through, you would understand why some of us are standing up and saying, first of all, the 10-year minimum for the commission of a crime while carrying a firearm, it was used to apply to these agents, was never meant to apply to law enforcement agents who are required by law to carry firearms. And I think we can kind of understand.

Remember when we passed that and it went through, it was sort of like, criminals, if you are going to engage in criminal activity, leave your gun at home, as a way of lowering the level of violence and the potential violence of criminals carrying firearms at the time of the commission of the crime.

This law that we passed at the Federal level is being applied to Federal officers who are required by statute to carry a firearm. And so now what we have is that we have law enforcement agents who are sworn to serve the American people, that are being prosecuted under a statute that says we are going to nail you because you were carrying a firearm during the commission of a crime when, as a requirement of their employment, they had to carry the firearm.

Doesn't anybody else find this kind of absurd, if not ridiculous?

And all I have to say is I would sincerely hope that the chairman of the committee will take a second thought about opposing this amendment, because I think in all fairness the American people are saying we have two agents who were serving their Nation as best as they could. They might have made a mistake that should have been administered through an administrative process; and those of us in local government that have worked with law enforcement know this, excessive force happens in certain situations.

But this is where a Federal law that we passed in Congress that says we are going to nail the criminals who use firearms in the commission of a crime and tell them don't ever carry a firearm when you are thinking of breaking a crime, that that law is being applied to our agents who are executing the requirements of Federal law. That was never the intention of this law, but it is being applied to these two agents.

So I just have to say sincerely, I would really ask the chairman to reconsider his opposition to this amendment. I think fair-minded people that know why this Federal law was passed know that it was not meant for Border Patrol agents or any Federal agents that are required to carry a firearm, to use this law against those agents. And if you can do it to Border Patrol agents, you can do it to FBI agents, you can do it to everybody.

Now, let me just say something about the unique situation that we are seeing down at the border. At this location, Mr. Chairman, within the month of this incident you had Border Patrol agents under fire by automatic gunfire, AK-47s firing at our agents from across the border. There was good reason to think that our agents might have been a little more active with their guns than we might have preferred. But, in all fairness, it really comes down to: Are we willing to stand up and say there has been a mistake, that mistake needs to be addressed, needs to be reassessed, and do we now relinquish our responsibility of the budget to the executive branch where we say these agents have been wronged?

And if those of you that want to talk about this, in all the years I was in local government I saw excessive force cases brought very seldom. In this one sector, this Federal attorney has brought excessive force cases against three different law enforcement officers. Every one of them that we know of, or I know of, just happened to have been cases that involved illegal aliens, drug smugglers, foreign nationals committing a crime. That is really unique. I have never heard of that kind of situation occurring anywhere else.

In this case, it is time that we stand up and we say, you have the jurisdiction to prosecute, you have the jurisdiction not to give clemency on this issue, but we have the jurisdiction of saying you will not use the taxpayers' funds to prosecute these men.

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Mr. BILBRAY. I think you agree, though, that when we talked about the 10-year minimum, the jury was told that they had to administer the 10-year execution based on the commission of the crime. And I think you were here when the 10-year minimum was passed. I think you would agree the idea was to try to encourage anybody that, if you are going to do something that was illegal, you don't carry a gun, because it would lower that level of potential.

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