Mr. Chairman. before being elected to Congress. I served for 26 / years in the United States Border Patrol. including 13 of those as sector chief in McAllen and El Paso. Texas. I have years of experience patrolling the desert of the U.S.-Mexico border region. supervising thousands of hardworking. dedicated Border Patrol agents and doing anything within my power to strengthen our borders and to reduce illegal immigration. However. Mr. Chairman. it does not take that kind of experience to know that this bill fails to provide the funding required to hire and train the Border Patrol agents that we need to secure our Nations borders. Instead of funding the 2.000 new Border Patrol agents authorized under the 9/11 Commission legislation passed by this very Congress in 2004. the bill before us today provides only enough money for 1.200 new agents. Mr. Chairman. I ask you. what kind of logic is it to spend $1.9 billion to deploy our already overburdened National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border on a supposedly temporary basis but then fail to provide the resources necessary to hire and train an adequate number of Border Patrol agents who are charged with securing our Nations borders? From my perspective. Mr.
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illegal immigration Border Patrol