Speech #CREC-2017-03-02-pt1-PgS1548-3_t7

I want to say that I am appreciative of our colleagues who joined us on the trip--Senators Tillis and Heller, Congressman Rouzer from North Carolina, and my colleagues from Texas, Congressmen John Carter and Mike Conaway. I also wanted to say how much I appreciate Speaker Ryan coming to Texas and the Rio Grande Valley last Wednesday for, unfortunately, a short period of time, but we are all grateful that he came at all--I think, at the invitation of people like Congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House of Representatives. I think it is going to take all of our efforts working together to effect and implement the President's vision of border security, a goal we all share. I think what we all were reminded of is that it is more complex than some people assume, and it is going to take a combination of approaches, including personnel. We need to plus-up the Border Patrol because it doesn't do you any good if you identify somebody illegally bringing a shipment of drugs or illegally entering the United States if you don't have a Border Patrol agent to stop them. Also, the very useful border infrastructure--fencing and walls, for example, in the Hidalgo County area--were actually implemented as a way to improve their levee system when the Rio Grande river floods. They have actually created a dual-use structure that actually satisfies the Border Patrol's need for physical infrastructure along with levee improvements in a win-win situation. I believe that consulting with local officials and local stakeholders, we at the Federal level can come up with more of those win-win solutions. The point is that we have learned a lot, particularly in our military, about how to use technology to keep us safe--whether it is unmanned aerial vehicles or ground sensors or radars. Actually, they have several new aerostats, or balloons, up in the sky that are basically the eyes in the sky, or radar, which do a tremendous job helping to identify people illegally entering the United States and equipping the Border Patrol and law enforcement authorities with the sort of early notice they need in order to interdict people illegally entering the country. I will close by saying that one of the always surprising things I learn when I go to the Rio Grande Valley and talk to the Border Patrol is this. I ask them: How many different countries are represented by the people whom you detain illegally entering the United States? Obviously, the majority of them come from our neighbors to the south, not as much from Mexico as you might suspect anymore, because the Mexican economy is doing better and people are finding more opportunities there. But right now, the majority of the flow of people illegally entering the United States is from Central America. Unfortunately, the tragic situation there where mothers and fathers worry about their children--whether they are going to be killed by gangs or whether they are going to be forced to join gangs--and somehow make the very painful and difficult choice of turning their children over to human smugglers to try to make their way up the backbone of Mexico and into the United States, to be deposited on our doorstop in the United States. Last week when the congressional delegation was in McAllen, we went through the processing area where some of these immigrants from Central America were being processed. I asked a young boy there, who was in the process of being processed--through my regional director, because he spoke only Spanish--how old he was, and he said he was 6 years old. He wasn't unaccompanied in that trip from Central America, but his mother and father thought it was important enough to get him out of that ravaged part of the world, where the prospects are not very good, and to turn him over to a human smuggler to make his way up into the United States, only to find himself at a Border Patrol processing unit in McAllen, TX. My point is that I also met a young man from India, and I asked him: How much did it cost you to get to the United States from India? He said: About $6,000.