Speech #990079776

Because. very frankly. INS simply does not have the manpower to handle the problem. According to Palmer Stacys book. there are more law enforcement officers working on Capitol Hill protecting Congress than there are border patrolmen guarding our southern border with Mexico. Think of that. Let me quote from an article from the Wall Street Journal of Thursday. INS troops are rapidly being overrun by a swelling tide of illegal immigrants. At any one time. there are fewer border patrol officers on duty along the 2.000mile MexicanAmerican border than there are policemen on the day shift in Philadelphia. The INS has slightly more than a dozen immigration investigators in Houston to round up an estimated 500.000 illegal immigrants. Since 1972. the number of INS investigators in Los Angeles has been more than halved. to 60 from 140. while the number of illegal immigrants living in the city is believed to have grown to between 500.000 and one million. The illegal immigrants are ingenious in frustrating their outnumbered adversary. Some wear horseshoes to throw mounted pursuers off the track. A wellaimed rock from an illegal immigrant brought a lowflying INS helicopter crasing to the ground in Southern California a few years ago. When border patrolmen in Eagle Pass. Texas. planted sophisticated elecrtonic detection devices along the Rio Grande. some Mexicans stole one and forced the Border Patrol to pay an intermediary a $100 ransom to arrange for its return. "When youre trying to stop a man who hasnt eaten in a day or two. you find he can be a very clever opponent." says Gene R. Smithburg. assistant chief patrol agent in the services Sand Diego sector. A couple of more lines from the Wall Street Journal article. Mexicans and Central Americans arent the only ones who penetrate Americas soft underbelly. Last year. border patrolmen in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas arrested illegal immigrants from 43 countries. including China. Korea and Poland. Agents in Los Angeles recently broke up a network that smuggled Indian Sikhs into the U.S. through Tijuana. "I come to work knowing I might meet anyone in the world." says Ed Barrett. a border patrolman in El Paso. But there are just too many immigrants and too few border patrolmen. It is as simple as that. One more quote from the same article: Despite the INSs hightech wizardry. it still lacks many of the basic tools of law enforcement. In recent years. officers in the Dallas district have at times been told not to arrest illegal immigrants because there hasnt been enough money left in the budget to pay for the gasoline needed to drive them back to the border. In McAllen. Texas. officers are sometimes forced to release 20 to 30 illegal immigrants from Central America a day on their own recognizance because there isnt room to detain them in INS facilities or money to house them in the county jail. almost all of the illegal immigrants released without bond are never seen again.