Speech #960270706

We had an agreement worked out in conference that did fund the requests that we made. but the fact of the matter is that OvBl has jeopardized that attempt and if we do not put money back in here. OMB will have been successful in defeating the intent of the Congress as expressed by authorizations and expressed by appropriations. Finally. the suggest.on has been made that since we cannot solve the problem with this additional number of border patrol orticers why have this addition to the border patrol? Last year I took a tour of the entire border. I can tell you personally that violence has increased on that border. Violence has increased not only because the flow has increased. but because we do not have adequate law enforcement. We are now requiring officers to go out in oneman patrols instead of twoman patrols. When one man confronts 25. 50. or 100 illegal aliens and attempts to bring them in. the potential for violence is greater. because he does not have command of the situation. That is happening over and over again. where the border patrol officers are using their weapons more often because they are confronted with this situation. We are finding more and more border bandits seeking to prey upon those people who are coming across and in some cases to prey on the border patrol officers who are there. The morale of the border patrol is at an alltime low. And this existed in the Southwest sector of this country before we had the situation with the Cubans and the Haitians which required us to take 212 border patrol officers from the Southwest portion of the United States and temporarily assign them to Florida. [ 1720 In view of that fact. we now have an even worse situation on the Southwest portion of the border. Those of us in the Southwest portion of the United States know what a serious problem this is. It is a problem that has been swept under the rug by. yes. successive administrations. But I suggest no administration has done more to sweep it under the rug than this one. We have a President who said 3 years ago that we should add 2.000 additional personnel to the border patrol. and has cut them back. We had the former Commissioner of INS. Mr.