Speech #1010168960

Then I want to yield to my colleagues who are following with a special order very shortly. In the entire land border between the United States and Mexico. which is about 2.000 miles long. running from San Diego to Brownsville. TX. we have one agency which is in charge of interdicting people who are smuggling. whether they are smuggling illegal aliens across the border or some other type of contraband or narcotics. That agency is the Border Patrol. Now. in California. which has about a 150mile border with Mexico. you have about 600 Border Patrol men who are assigntvd to the force. About 400 of those Border Patrolmen show up on any given day because of vacations and time off. We have 400 Border Patrolmen showing up on any given day. Out of those people we have large segments of that Border Patrol pool of personnel attached to interior checkpoints on Highway 5 going to L.A. many miles north of the border. Highway 15 going up to Escondido. As a result. at any given time. in fact as we talk here at 3:15 a.m. in Washington. DC. if this is the best night the Border Patrol ever had in terms of their people showing up on the entire 150mile land border between the United States and Mexico that comprises the CaliforniaMexican border from San Diego to Yuma. we have less than 50 agents right now on that 150mile border. or roughly one man to evey 3 miles. Now. as a result of that. the situation that the gentleman from Louisiana described earlier is. in fact. taking place. The situation he described is this: We have major shipments of cocaine coming out of Colombia. being flown into northern airfields in Mexico. and large transshipments largely on the backs of people carrying knapsacks full of cocaine. coming across the border in large quantities.