Speech #CREC-2017-02-01-pt1-PgH860-7_t10

I would like to build on the gentlewoman's remarks and talk about one of the consequences of building walls. I have already made the case that the border is as secure as it has ever been. Those who study and understand security issues have come to the conclusion that extra miles of wall don't deter migrants. The lower levels of migration that we have seen to this country have a lot more to do with the U.S. economy and its struggling performance in the immediate aftermath of the Great Recession and throughout that road to recovery and, relatively speaking, the performance in other countries, including Mexico, that has afforded Mexican nationals more opportunity to stay there. The border is as secure as it has ever been. We have recently doubled the size of the Border Patrol. We are using the latest and greatest technology to remain as vigilant as possible, which we should. It is also important to know the character and quality of the Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers who man the line, who are at our ports, and who have one of the most difficult, dangerous jobs that anyone has in the Federal Government. The conditions in which they work, the situations which they must anticipate, the constant vigilance that they must maintain, and the kind of threats that they have to be aware of--which include drug smuggling, which is critically important to stop; which include human smuggling, which we must deter and stop; and which includes, even though there has never been a terrorist or terrorist act connected to the U.S.-Mexican border, includes the possibility that sometime that might happen--those men and women are literally on the front line protecting this community. I would like to see some of the $14 billion to $20 billion proposed for the construction of a wall put behind our Border Patrol agents to improve their salaries, their working conditions, and the ability for them to do their job and to keep us safe. I would like to hire more Customs and Border Protection officers, the men and women in blue at our ports of entry who facilitate legitimate trade and travel at our ports of entry. They are the ones who help to keep this economy humming while keeping us safer. Madam Speaker, one of the consequences, though, of building walls, while it doesn't make us safer and while it uses a lot of resources that could be better put toward other more legitimate security challenges, it does do one thing that I want all of us to know about. It does ensure that migrants coming to this country will unnecessarily suffer, and many will die. In the same time where we have gone from 1.6 million apprehensions a year--that was the year 2000, 1.6 million apprehensions on our southern border--to last year, when there were just a little over 400,000, so a quarter of the level that we had 15, 16 years ago, in that same time that we have had record low levels of migration, we have maintained record high levels of migrant deaths. So those few migrants who do try to cross in between our ports of entry and do encounter physical barriers are going to more remote sections of the border. They are dying of thirst. They are dying of exposure.