OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

Date: June 1, 2011
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Immigration

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you.

My amendment would strike section 547, which would devote border security dollars to environmental mitigation along this country's southern border.

The Border Patrol has unlimited access to private property, but the Border Patrol cannot always patrol Federal land, even if it is a known corridor for illegal traffic, including trafficking of humans and trafficking of drugs.

Some permits, which are required to be issued by the Department of the Interior to the Department of Homeland Security for Border Patrol, take months to approve. Others are not granted at all. But when the Department of Homeland Security, our Border Patrol, is given access, Federal land managers force the Border Patrol to fork over money for environmental projects that may or may not have anything to do with the constitutional obligations of our Border Patrol.

Madam Chairman, these are American taxpayer dollars. And more than that, they're dollars for border security, which I again repeat is a constitutionally delineated function of the Federal Government. But under section 547, these tax dollars are paying for the unreasonable demands placed on the Border Patrol by Federal land managers--one Department of the government, the Department of the Interior, taking dollars from another, the Department of Homeland Security, for a function that is required in the Constitution by the Border Patrol.

I appreciate the chairman's staff taking time to try to work this out with my office and with the Natural Resources Committee, the standing committee that is responsible for supervisory control of the Department of the Interior. I regret that we were not able to come to resolution of this issue before floor consideration.

So I'm moving to strike this provision with the hope that we can continue to work with Chairman Simpson, who is the subcommittee chairman of the Appropriations Committee on Interior and the Environment, and Chairman Hastings, who is the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee in the House, to come up with a better approach to solving this problem of Border Patrol access to Federal lands.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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