Mr. Chairman. obviously I have a concern. coming from a border State and border district. I share the concern that my colleagues from California have in offering this amendment today with regard to the Border Patrol and Immigration Service. In my remarks in the general debate on this bill I talked about the cuts in the number of Border Patrol agents that I think need to be restored. I think. however. as my colleague. Mr. ROGERS. has said. this amendment may be a little premature. We are planning to offer a motion to recommitand in that motion we will restore to the INS some of these funds for Border Patrol as well as for the investigative and border agents who do the regular inspections--but there are also other priorities. and one of the other top priorities is the number of Federal prisoner days. That. is the money for maintaining Federal prisoners in the Federal prison system. I think we ought to wait until we see how this bill looks at the end of todays debate with the amount of money that is struck on points of order. to know what we have available to us in order to restore this and to make sure that the motion to recommit restores It in the proper places where the administrations top priorities are. I support the administration priorities in law enforcement. but that includes money for maintaining prisoners in the Federal prison system as well as for the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI and the DEA. We need to look at all of those. I would say that INS. as well as the Federal prison days. are the top priorities that we have.
Keywords matched
Naturalization Border Patrol Immigration