Speech #1090142894

I know folks in my State have seen this happen firsthand. Up on the hiline. border agents in Havre. MT. have arrested illegal immigrants from as many as 35 different countries. Many of these illegal immigrants are found hiding on trains as they pass through Havre and several other towns on the hiline of Montana. In February. a fugitive thought to be armed and dangerous led the Montana Highway Patrol on two highspeed chases near Kalispell. MT. before being apprehended. He was trying to escape to Canada. Last October. Border Patrol agents spotted a man driving in a stolen pickup toward the Canadian border outside of Cut Bank. MT. After a standoff. the man was shot by officers acting in selfdefense. I know my colleagues from States that share international borders. northern and southern. have stories like this. They can go on forever. We have Illegal aliens still flooding into this country through our southern border every day and. yes. some through the northern border. It is not too much to ask for our law enforcement agencies to find. detain. and deport those who have broken the law. It is overwhelming. It Is amazing to me that we can so diligently pursue terrorists as dangerous and as murderous as alZarqawi in Iraq and be successful. yet we do not meet with the same success here in this country. When it comes to our own borders. our own immigration policies. mistakes continue to be made both on the ground and here in this Congress. More importantly. when we allow illegal aliens to stay. what kind of a message does that send to the rest of the world about our immigration policy? If you come here illegally. just wait it out. That is the message we are sending now. We will give you amnesty eventually. It seems that 20 years from now. it will be amnesty once again for even more of those who would enter this country illegally. The 1986 immigration reform act didnt work. Basically. the bill that recently passed the Senatenot with my supportalmost mirrors the 1986 act. What good is history if we dont learn the lesson?