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Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, and the War on Terror (Unabridged)
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A Line
in the Sand: Confronting the Threat at the Southwest Border
HOUSE
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY - Interim Report
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Executive
Summary
The Texas-Mexico border region
has been experiencing an alarming rise in the level of criminal cartel
activity, including drug and human smuggling, which has placed
significant additional burdens on Federal, State, and local law enforcement
agencies. This interim report will examine the roots of the criminal
enterprise and its effects on the local populations, what steps are being
taken or should be taken to counter the threat, and the significance of
these issues for the overall homeland security of the United States.
The United States border with Mexico extends nearly 2,000 miles along the
southern
borders of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. In most areas, the
border is
located in remote and sparsely populated areas of vast desert and rugged
mountain
terrain.
The
border’s vast length and varied terrain poses significant challenges to U.S.
law
enforcement efforts to control the entry of individuals and goods into the
United States.
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) within the Department of
Homeland
Security (DHS) is the federal agency with primary responsibility to detect
and prevent
illegal entry into the United States. As of the date of this report,approximately 11,000 CBP agents patrol the nearly 6,000 miles of
international border the United States shares with its neighbors Mexico and
Canada.
In
addition to Federal agents, State and local law enforcement also patrol the
border areas. In remote areas along the border, many sheriffs’ departments
are called upon to address border-related criminal matters and serve as a
backstop to CBP operations. In many cases, these local law enforcement
agencies do not have the resources necessary to patrol the thousands of
square miles of border territory under their respective jurisdiction,
leaving the security of the border vulnerable.
While the Southwest border hosts
robust legal commercial activity, the border also is the
site of violent criminal enterprises. These enterprises are carried out by
organized
criminal syndicates and include the smuggling of drugs, humans, weapons, and
cash
across the U.S.-Mexico border.
During
2005, Border Patrol apprehended approximately 1.2 million illegal aliens; of
those 165,000 were from countries other than Mexico. Of the non-Mexican
aliens, approximately 650 were from special interest countries. Special
interest countries are those “designated by the intelligence community as
countries that could export individuals that could bring harm to our country
in the way of terrorism.”
Federal law enforcement estimates that 10 percent to 30 percent of illegal
aliens are actually apprehended and 10 percent to 20 percent of drugs are
seized. Therefore, in 2005, as many as 4 to 10 million illegal aliens
crossed into the United States; and as much as 5.6 to 11.2 million pounds of
cocaine and 34.3 to 68.6 million pounds of marijuana entered the United
States.
The triple threat of drug smuggling, illegal and unknown crossers, and
rising violence are
the reality facing communities. While many illegal aliens cross the border
searching for
employment, not all illegal aliens are crossing into the United States to
find work. Law
enforcement has stated that some individuals come across the border because
they have
been forced to leave their home countries due to their criminal activity.
These dangerous
criminals are fleeing the law in other countries and seeking refuge in the
United States.
Along the border with Mexico,
there are 43 Ports of Entry, 18 in Texas, connecting with
major U.S. interstate highways. These Ports or Entry and highway systems are
intended
to facilitate lawful trade and commerce. However, the Mexican drug cartels
have been
able to use these highways for their own ends, seeing in them an efficient
means to
transport their drugs and illegal aliens across the border.
Mexican drug cartels operating
along the Southwest border are more sophisticated and
dangerous than any other organized criminal enterprise. The Mexican cartels,
and the
smuggling rings and gangs they leverage, wield substantial control over the
routes into
the United States and pose substantial challenges to U.S. law enforcement to
secure the
Southwest border.
The cartels operate along the border with military grade
weapons,
technology and intelligence and their own respective paramilitary enforcers.
In addition, human smugglers coordinate with the drug cartels, paying a fee
to use the
cartels’ safe smuggling routes into the Unites States. There are also
indications the
cartels may be moving to diversify their criminal enterprises to include the
increasingly
lucrative human smuggling trade.
Moreover, U.S. law enforcement
has established that there is increasing coordination
between Mexican drug cartels, human smuggling networks and U.S.-based gangs.
The
cartels use street and prison gangs located in the United States as their
distribution
networks. In the United States, the gang members operate as surrogates and
enforcers for
the cartels.
Murders and kidnappings on the
both sides of the border have significantly increased in
recent years. The violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has increased so
dramatically,
the United States Ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, during the last year,
has issued an
unprecedented number of diplomatic notes to the Mexican Government and
threat
advisories to U.S. citizens traveling to Mexico. During August 2005, the
Ambassador
closed the U.S. consulate in Nuevo Laredo for one week in order to assess security.
This new generation of
sophisticated and violent cartels, along the Southwest border, is
presenting significant challenges to U.S. law enforcement. These criminal
syndicates
have unlimited money to buy the most advanced weapons and technology
available. The
cartels monitor the movements and communications of law enforcement and use
that
intelligence to enable the criminals to transport their cargo accordingly.
In addition to the criminal activities and violence of the cartels on our
Southwest border,
there is an ever-present threat of terrorist infiltration over the Southwest
border. Data
indicates that there are hundreds of illegal aliens apprehended entering the
United States
each year who are from countries known to support and sponsor terrorism.
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U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement investigations have revealed that
aliens were smuggled from the Middle East to staging areas in Central and
South
America, before being smuggled illegally into the United States.
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Members of Hezbollah have
already entered the United States across the
Southwest border.
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U.S. military and intelligence
officials believe that Venezuela is emerging as a
potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan
government is issuing identity documents that could subsequently be used
to
obtain a U.S. visa and enter the country.
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