Recognizing The Border Patrol's Fight Against Human Smuggling

Floor Speech

RECOGNIZING THE BORDER PATROL'S FIGHT AGAINST HUMAN SMUGGLING -- (House of Representatives - May 06, 2009)

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Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I concur with everything the gentleman from Tennessee just said. Mr. Cohen and I do enjoy working together on a bipartisan basis on a great many issues.

Today this bill, H. Res. 14, attempts to begin, if you will, a downpayment on thanking the men and women of the Border Patrol and of ICE and other portions of Homeland Security for their tireless efforts to defend America, and particularly on an issue that I find very personal, that of human smuggling.

Mr. Speaker, 5 years ago I wrote the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California expressing my concern after learning from a reporter that U.S. attorneys had refused to prosecute an alien smuggler apprehended while transporting a car loaded with undocumented immigrants.

The smuggler, Mr. Antonio Amparo-Lopez, had attempted to escape the arresting Border Patrol agents and, upon his recapture, the Border Patrol learned that this smuggler had 21 known aliases, had been arrested and deported more than 20 times without ever having been prosecuted once.

Mr. Speaker, this is what the Border Patrol once faced, is something that the Border Patrol no longer faces, and we would hope, on a bipartisan basis, would no longer face.

As I dug deeper into this, I learned that this was, in fact, at that time a common problem, and that Border Patrol agents had been forced to accept the reality that no matter how many times they did their job, often with people with large amounts of drugs, often with people who they knew were guilty of more heinous crimes, and, in fact, sometimes when they knew that people who perhaps had abandoned the human beings they were trafficking in to die in the desert, they could not take action.

On a bipartisan basis, I want to recognize the men and women of the Border Patrol for their willingness to do this job with personal danger, having had rocks pummeled at them, having been shot at.

The men and women of the Border Patrol and their allied agencies do what we ask them to do even when we do not fully support them.

The San Diego Border Patrol sector chief even told the House subcommittee in a hearing how the failure to prosecute the foot soldiers in alien smuggling organizations had created an opportunity in which ``what would happen then, we would apprehend people that were guiding people across the country, many times at risk. And without meeting prosecution guidelines, they were simply voluntarily return back to Mexico where they could continue to conduct their illicit activity. There is no level of consequences.''

Mr. Speaker, I'm glad to say that is no longer the case. I join with my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to say, human smuggling, whether illegal immigrants or in fact victims of kidnapping around the world for purposes of prostitution, cannot be tolerated. We must have a zero-tolerance policy, and we must support the men and women that protect our borders and our interior.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. ISSA. At this time, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to close on my side by thanking the gentleman from Tennessee. Memphis is a long way from the southern or the northern border, and yet he has helped us in moving this piece of legislation along because, in fact, our borders ultimately, once somebody is over our border in America, they can go anywhere virtually without ever being stopped. And so I thank all the Members who, whether they are a border district like myself or far inland, have seen that human trafficking is something we need to end.

And I again ask all of us to support this bipartisan legislation.

And I yield back the balance of my time.

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