Speech #1090054479

Mr. President. despite the worthy efforts that have been made to secure our homeland. much remains to be done. I. for one. do not believe we can ever expect to fully secure our Nation until we enact comprehensive immigration reform that includes strong and effective enforcement requirements. We cannot accomplish that in this pending bill. but in the meantime we can still take additional measures to better secure our border. I commend the chairman. subcommittee chairman. and the ranking members for putting forward an appropriations bill that includes a number of sound border security funding provisions. One area I would like to see strengthened. as is proposed by this amendment. is to ensure we are more fully monitoring the southwestern border where most of the illegal crossing and needless deaths occur annually. Let me cite a few of the more alarming statistics about what is going on in the southwestern border region. Over 300 people died in the desert last year trying to cross the border. About 200 of those deaths occurred in the Arizona desert. The Border Patrol is currently apprehending approximately 1.300 undocumented immigrants a day in Arizona. This number is expected to rise. An estimated 3.000 people enter the United States illegally from Mexico every single day. Last year. 1.1 million illegal immigrants were caught by the Border Patrol and more than half of those were in the State of Arizona. The Border Patrol releases more than 90 percent of the people they catch through voluntary repatriation. because the system is simply overwhelmed. I want to repeat that. Mr. President. Anybody who has visited our border and seen those wonderful men and women who serve there in the Border Patrol and Immigration will agree they are simply overwhelmed. We have our work cut out for us. We need more manpower and better focused technology. This legislation provides some needed funding for both. but I hope by the time it passes the Senate that we redirect some of the $31.8 billion in this bill to allow us to fulfill a commitment we made just 7 months ago as part of the intelligence reform legislation. In that law we authorize for the coming year 2.000 more Border Patrol agents. twice as many as would be provided for in the underlying bill. and 8.000 detention beds. 5.790 more than provided for in the bill before us. I filed amendments to fulfill these authorized levels and would like to work with the bill managers to address these important security issues. Another area of particular concern along the southwestern border. particularly to Arizonans. since our State is now the leading gateway to illegal entry. is the Federal Governments use of technologies that are already available to strengthen our security efforts.