So they are coming across this border
ostensibly legally--obviously, through the legal process of entry--but
carrying illicit drugs, and we are only capturing a fraction of them. A
part of what we are proposing in this bill is additional resources to
interdict more of those drugs, to make it less likely that somebody
could come across the border by use of a pickup truck or by using
backpacks full of poison that will ultimately get into the blood
streams of people who will ultimately die--many of them, tens of
thousands a year. That is a case--a compassionate case--for border
security. This is the number that I was talking about earlier: 15,469 deaths in
2016 alone related to heroin. A lot of these are coming across the
border. But only about 1.5 percent of all of the drugs that are
estimated to come across the border are being seized today. How do you
actually increase this seizure rate? You put the resources and
authorities in place so that the Border Patrol and Customs and
immigration resources down on the border can actually find them, and
arrest, charge, convict, and incarcerate the people who are poisoning
the men and women and boys and girls in this country. There is also another thing, and this is something that when I was
down on the Texas border just stuck with me. I was on a 7,500-acre
ranch, which is really, really small in Texas terms.
Keywords matched
immigration Border Patrol border
security