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“OPEN BORDER CHAOS” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3440-H3441 on April 17, 2007.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
OPEN BORDER CHAOS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, recent memos that have been released finally by the Justice Department regarding certain situations in the Federal Government, specifically in the U.S. Attorney's office, have revealed numerous things. No wonder the Justice Department fought releasing these e-mails and memos.
We now understand that the prosecution of Federal drug cases along the Texas-Mexico border has dropped dramatically. All the way from Texas to California, prosecutions of drug cases have dropped. In some places up to 25 percent of drug cases are not prosecuted that were prosecuted just a year ago. What is happening is the Federal Government is not able to prosecute drug smugglers, and they are asking the States to prosecute those cases.
Many States--especially those counties on the border with Texas and Mexico, same was true in Arizona and Mexico, New Mexico and California and Mexico--don't have the resources to prosecute all those drug cases.
So what is happening is many cases are dropping through the cracks, all because the Federal Government has dropped 25 percent of prosecution of drug smugglers into the United States because they say they are overwhelmed with cases.
How many cases are we talking about? What types of drug cases? Well, in some cases they are prosecuting cases of only 500 pounds or more of marijuana. Five hundred pounds, that is just a number. But we can relate it to money, and 500 pounds of marijuana is worth about
$400,000. A drug smuggler smuggling in $400,000 worth of dope or less, in some cases is getting a pass by the Federal Government because they say they are too overwhelmed with the illegal entry into the United States by drug smugglers.
If the States don't prosecute those cases, as many States are not able to do, what is happening is those drug smugglers are getting a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Drug smugglers are not stupid. They can weigh their marijuana. So all they got to do, before they bring that dope into the United States, is make sure they have less than 500 pounds, because if they are caught by our border agents, the Federal Government won't prosecute them because the Federal Government says we have too many cases.
This is absurd; this is nonsense. This is chaos. Law enforcement is mad about this, and rightfully so. One former DEA official in the El Paso sector made the comment that if the Feds decline to prosecute, and the State lacks the resources to prosecute these drug smugglers, they just go free. You have people violating the drug laws who now get away with it in the United States, all because the Federal Government doesn't do its job. The job is bigger than prosecuting drug smugglers. The job is protect the borders, and our Federal Government doesn't do that.
They claim that they are not prosecuting drug cases because they are prosecuting folks that illegally enter the United States. But maybe that is not true either. These same memos now reveal that in the State of Texas an illegal coming into the United States has to be captured six times before they are actually prosecuted criminally for being in the United States.
What happens is if they are caught the first six times, they are just taken home. Of course, they come right back to the United States. They are not being prosecuted. In Arizona, sometimes it is up to 11 times illegals enter the United States before they are criminally prosecuted for being here illegally.
So what is the Federal Government doing? Well, we do know they are spending a lot of their time prosecuting border protectors. They are spending a lot of taxpayer money to make deals, back-room deals with drug smugglers so that they can prosecute the likes of border agents Ramos and Compean, deputy sheriffs like Gilmer Hernandez, individuals who are enforcing the law.
The Federal Government's duty is to protect the dignity of this Nation. It needs to protect the border from everybody coming into the United States illegally, no matter the reason, but especially those people who are criminals, especially those drug smugglers who bring drugs into the United States and make a profit off of that human weakness, and now giving them a pass, because they are not bringing in enough dope? This is absurd. Not prosecuting illegals until the sixth or eleventh time because we don't supposedly have the resources is absurd, and it is all because we don't protect the dignity of the United States.
Border control in this country doesn't seem to even exist. Third World nations protect their borders better than the United States, and the United States protects the borders of other nations like Korea. Why don't we protect our own border?
While all of this is going on down there on the lawless border of the United States and Mexico, now we hear about a new reform package, a comprehensive immigration plan that is supposed to have little border security, supposed to have a lot of amnesty and supposed to have a whole lot more guest workers in the United States. That is not going to work.
What we need is the National Guard on the border. We need to protect the borders, the dignity of the United States.
And that's just the way it is.
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