Speech #1140009377

There is literally no room at times for someone to lie down. either. Faced with this human crisis. Customs and Border Protection agents sprang to action. Among their leaders was our agent here today whom I especially want to put a spotlight on: Ramiro Garza. With the help of his colleagues. Ram went above and beyond to process the arrivals. according to the law. while also responding to the human needs of these people. Agent Garza helped create an emergency operations center to manage the crisis and worked to transfer unaccompanied children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Perhaps most impressive. though. he worked with his colleagues to convert an enormous abandoned warehouse that we visited in McAllen. TX. I will not soon forget that. It is just a few miles from our border with Mexico. He turned it into a processing center for detained migrants and they did it in 18 days. They looked at a placeand they described what it was like before they started working on it. and then what they did in 19 days. they did pretty remarkable stuff. And Ram. whom we honor especially here today. and those who worked with him deserve our recognition. This processing center helped greatly relieve the crowded and inadequate conditions in multiple Border Patrol stations along the border. When Senator RON JOHNSON. our Presiding Officer. Senator SASSE. and I visited this past weekend the extraordinary processing center that Agent Garza helped set up. we were amazed to see a cavernous. orderly center equipped with the humanitarian necessities needed for hundreds of children and their parents. The center also had space for Central American officials to work with Customs and Border Protection in order to properly identify migrants and arrange for speedier repatriations. in many cases to their home countries. where appropriate. Agent Garza was instrumental in designing the processing facility and getting it up and running quickly. Today he is in charge of that facility. This is just the latest achievement in Agent Garzas career with the Border Patrol. As I said. known most of his life as Ram. he grew up in the Rio Grande Valley. There he attended high school and the University of TexasPan American. He joined the Border Patrol in 1996. His first assignment was to the Brownsville station in the Rio Grande sector. In 2004. he was promoted to supervisory Border Patrol agent at the Rio Grande City station. That was followed by tours at the Rio Grande sectors intelligence office and at Harlingen station. Agent Garza also worked on detail here in Washington. DC. where his duties included supporting the agencys efforts in biometric collectionsomething we think is very important. While he is helping to humanely process migrants apprehended at the border. Agent Garza also cares for his own familyhis wife and their own two children. We thank them for sharing with us their husband and their dada very good man.