IMMIGRATION REFORM (House of Representatives - July 16, 2003) The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader. Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, on September 10 and 11, we are going to be holding an event here in Washington, D.C. We call it the Day of Remembrance Event. The Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus is sponsoring this day of remembrance for victims of open borders on those days, September 11, in Washington, D.C. Mr. Speaker, information about that is available if one were to go to the Web site, victimsvoice.org. Activities on that day will include press availability for dozens of victims who are willing to tell their stories, a news conference at 11 a.m. for victims identified and introduced by Members of Congress who are members of the Immigration Reform Caucus. There will be a photo display illustrating dozens of victims' stories, later a dinner program to honor victims and present the first annual Kris Eggle award for heroism in immigration law enforcement. The purpose of the day of remembrance is to expand public awareness and understanding of the immense harm done to our Nation and our citizens by our open borders policy and lax enforcement of our immigration laws. For too long we have talked about these problems in terms only related to numbers. We have used lots of statistics to try and bring home the point that our Nation's immigration policy, or lack thereof, our Nation's open borders policy, which is really what it is, has done enormous harm to the Nation and promises to even do greater harm to the Nation. But what we want to do on September 10 and 11, Mr. Speaker, is to actually identify the people, to put faces with the statistics, to see how these things, open borders especially and our Nation's policies toward immigration, have wreaked havoc on our population and has the potential of doing great harm to the Nation. Over a million illegal aliens enter our country each year by coming across our porous borders. Immigration authorities do not know who they are or where they are going. There are over 80,000 convicted felons on immigration agencies' absconders lists. They have been ordered deported but remain at large in the United States. There are over 100,000 additional convicted felons released from jails and prisons every year and not deported, even though the laws of the United States have been broken by these people. Over 1 million foreign workers have been allowed to come to this country to replace American workers through the H-1B and L-1 visa programs. Many of them have overstayed, hundreds of thousands of them have overstayed their visas and in fact are living here illegally but are employed in various industries, taking jobs away from Americans, forcing American citizens to change their life-style dramatically, all because American industry, American corporations have embarked upon a policy of cheap labor and they have done so with the agreement of this government and the acquiescence of the government to this policy of cheap labor. These people, the folks who have been displaced by foreign workers, the folks who have had family members killed, folks who have had family members attacked, beaten, robbed, raped, all these people are victims, as well, of course, as those who have paid the ultimate price and have died as a result of the crimes committed by people who are here illegally. These people need to be recognized, and maybe, just maybe, by bringing them to the attention of the public, by bringing them to the attention of the Congress, we will be able to move one step closer to actually gaining control of our borders. A simple request that all of them have. That is the one thing that most, in fact all of the folks who will be here, I think, have in common, a request that our borders be secured. Many of them will be asking that our relationship, especially with countries like Mexico and other countries in Latin America, be addressed so that extradition can be achieved so that when people have fled the United States after committing these heinous crimes, fled the United States from Mexico and other places that refuse to extradite criminals back to the United States, what these victims are pleading for and the families of victims are pleading for is that we negotiate with Mexico and other countries to get these people back to face justice. That is what they will be asking for. As I said, we will be giving out an award at that time, the Kris Eggle Award for Heroism and Immigration Law Enforcement. It will be presented at a dinner sponsored by the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus and the National Center for Citizenship and Immigration. Kris Eggle is someone I will talk about in just a moment or two because I am going to go through quite a list this evening. I am going to go through a list of people who have been harmed by our immigration policy, personally affected. Not too long ago, Mr. Speaker, someone came up to me and said, You know why you really cannot gain a foothold on this issue? You know why you cannot get the Congress of the United States to respond to you when you go on the floor night after night, when you offer all the amendments that you offer dealing with this issue of immigration reform? Do you know why you cannot get people to support you? It is because, frankly, when you think about it, to whom does this matter, to whom does the issue of immigration and immigration reform matter? To people coming across the border, of course, it matters a great deal. They do not want any sort of reform. They do not want anybody to stop them from coming across. For people who are bringing them across, the coyotes, the people who make money by bringing people across into this country illegally, they certainly do not want anybody to interfere. It is a big deal to them. They care a great deal about this whole issue. To the people who are affected like the individuals that I am going to bring up here tonight, they care a great deal because they have been personally affected and maybe to the point in time when that happened, up to that point in time, they were not really concerned. They were like most Americans, and that is when this friend of mine said to me: you have got a lot of people who are concerned because they are benefiting from open borders. But to most Americans it is a little concern. It is not a big one. And to most Americans, frankly, there is possibly the feeling that they too somehow, some way, maybe in a small way, but they also benefit from people who come across our borders illegally. They get their lawn mowed more inexpensively. They get their house painted, a variety of other things that we all know many people who are here illegally are employed doing. And to them they want to sort of look away. If one pressed individuals, they might say, yes, there is a problem. We really should do something about our borders. But down deep they think, I kind of benefit from it. I mean, maybe when I go to the grocery store and buy a head of lettuce, I am paying a few cents less for that head of lettuce. So maybe I should not care all that much and I am not going to really press it. I want to try to impress upon those people so that they can impress upon their Representatives in this body that it is important, that these things do matter, and that they too can be affected in the most severe fashion. So I am going to talk tonight about a lot of folks who have been affected in the most dramatic way imaginable. They have had their lives turned inside out, essentially. They have had their family members, as I say, murdered. They have lost family members. They have many times been affected by our open borders. And many of the folks are people that have been affected because they have lost their jobs. Let me say there are some, I do not know, 11 to 13 million people who are living here in the United States illegally. No one knows the exact number, of course. But that is a pretty good guess, 11 to 13 million people. And for the most part, the people who are here illegally are doing jobs that, I am told, I hear this often enough, Americans, other Americans, will not take. I challenge that, Mr. Speaker. I challenge that notion that there are all these people here taking jobs that no other American would take. And just as an example, we will talk for just a minute about the people who are dramatically affected by massive immigration of low-skilled, low-wage workers into the United States. And these are people at the lowest economic level in our society. They are more often than not low-skilled, low-wage workers who have time and again found themselves either out of jobs or only able to obtain jobs paying very little money, and these people are affected negatively. Many of them are American citizens, many of them whose families have been here for generations, longer than my family has been here; but they find themselves unable to break out of a cycle of poverty, always stuck in low-wage jobs, and the pay for those jobs does not increase as it should in a market like ours, if in fact that market were allowed to adjust because of supply and demand. But what happens when we allow 11 to 13 million people into this country illegally, many of them low-skilled, low-wage workers, is we depress the wage rates for people in that category. And simply because there are so many people seeking those jobs. In America today we know that we have changed dramatically from an industrial and agricultural society, a society that relied heavily on brawn as opposed to brains for the production of goods and services to now a technological society, an information-based society that relies heavily on the acquisition of knowledge and certain very important skills. So, therefore, folks at the lower range are already at an economic disadvantage, but we put them at an even worse economic disadvantage by importing labor, by allowing the importation of labor even in illegal fashion where millions of people come here seeking jobs that require very little skill and, therefore, are paid very little. Certain employers benefit from that arrangement. That is undeniably true. And even one can say that a lot of people are coming here and bettering their lives even though they are making very little money because where they came from, it was even worse. There is a fascinating book that has just been written; and, Mr. Speaker, I would certainly encourage anyone to get ahold of this particular book. It is called "Mexifornia." "Mexifornia." And it is written by a professor of the classics at an institution of higher education in California, who is also a farmer, and I believe it is Selma, California; and he is third or fourth generation on this farm, and he takes an interesting look at this phenomena. And what he describes is fascinating in a number of ways. As I said, I really do suggest people obtain this book and read it carefully because, for one thing, it is really well written. This gentleman's style of writing is great and very compelling. But it also describes a phenomenon that we do not really hear about very often, we have not read about, and that is what happens to the people who do come here as low-wage, low-skilled workers in their late teens or early 20's. What happens to them after, I do not know, 20 or 30 years at most of hard labor in the United States, 20 or 30 years where they are making minimum wage and at first it looks alluring to them? At first it looks like they can buy things that they would not have been able to buy had they stayed in the country of their birth. A material world almost immediately appeals to them and seems within reach and within their grasp, and they begin what they think is a new life in a new world that is going to be prosperous and better for them and their family, and what they find out is that after 20 or 30 years of hard labor, they are physically incapable of doing the work anymore, but there is nothing else out there for them, that they have not achieved the "American Dream." They have stayed at that same level of both income and of poverty for lo these many years, and now there is nowhere left to go. There is no upward mobility left. They are just physically not able to actually pursue that dream anymore, and they become a ward of the state for all intents and purposes. They become unemployed and disillusioned, and so are their children. And what he points out in this book is that contrary to what has happened in the United States in the past in our history where immigrant families have come, labored hard, their children have then gone on to the next stage, that is to say, gotten an education, moved up the economic ladder and become part of the middle class, second or third generation, it is not happening for many of the people who are coming here today, especially from Mexico, and again for a wide variety of reasons, but it not happening. That second generation is not achieving, is not moving ahead, is not getting the education. In fact, what we see is that those kids are dropping out of high school, never getting to college, and Hispanic Americans, unfortunately, Hispanics living in this country legally or illegally, and their children are not moving ahead and achieving the same sorts of goals as immigrants of the past. And as I say, there are many reasons why this may be occurring, but it is the phenomenon. It is an interesting one, and it is one that I think should be discussed because in a way it is almost like we are importing throwaway people. We are using them for the skills that they have for the labor that they can provide, the cheap labor that they can provide for a few years and then they are discarded, and they become certainly an expense for the taxpayers of the Nation, and that is why often we hear the phrase "cheap labor is not cheap." Cheap labor costs us a great deal. It costs us in terms of the depressed wage rates that it imposes upon low-skilled, low-wage workers in the United States and, therefore, essentially a drag on the economy. It costs us in terms of the infrastructure that has to be created to support the basic needs of the people who come here and of their children who do not get out of this cycle of poverty. It is a fact, an empirically provable fact, that these folks unfortunately access the welfare system far more than nonimmigrants. It is also a fact that our schools are inundated with children with great difficulties, especially language difficulties, therefore creating an expense, a significant expense, to try to teach. All these things are happening in the pursuit of cheap labor, cheap labor at the low-skill level. By the way, the book I mentioned earlier, "Mexifornia," it is written by a gentleman by the name of Victor Davis Hanson. It is called "Mexifornia: A State of Becoming." And in the small critique of the book the author says, "Massive illegal immigration from Mexico into California, Victor Davis Hanson writes, "coupled with the loss of confidence and the old melting pot model of transforming newcomers into Americans is changing the very nature of the State." He says, "Yet we Californians have been inadequate in meeting this challenge, both failing to control our borders with Mexico and to integrate the new alien population into our mainstream." The critique says, "Noted for his military histories and especially his social commentary of post-9/11 American life, Hanson is a fifth-generation Californian who teaches college classics courses and runs a family farm. "Mexifornia" is part history, part political analysis, part memoir. It is an intensely personal book about what has changed in California over the last quarter century and how the real losers in the chaos caused by hemorrhaging borders are the Mexican immigrants themselves. "A large part of the problem, Hanson believes, comes from the opportunistic coalition that stymies immigration reform and, even worse, stifles an honest discussion of this growing problem." And how true that statement is. How desperately we try to avoid the discussion of this problem, yet how desperately we need to discuss the problem. "Corporations," he says, "contractors, and agribusiness demand cheap wage labor from Mexico, whatever the social consequences. Meanwhile, academics, journalists, government bureaucrats, and La Raza advocates envision illegal aliens as a vast new political constituency for those committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement." Again, how powerful those words. Mr. Speaker, I just cannot emphasize how important they are to understand. "Advocates envision legal aliens as a vast new political constituency for those committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement." How many times I have come to this floor and explained that the problem I have is the problem that occurs in both political parties, on the one hand, the Republican Party that seeks this cheap labor and, on the other hand, the Democratic Party that seeks, as it is pointed out here, a political constituency "committed to the notion that victimhood, not citizenship, is the key to advancement." Oh, how well that is put. "Mexifornia" is an indictment of the policies that got California into its present mess. But this beautifully written book also reflects Hanson's strong belief that our traditions of assimilation, integration, and inter-marriage may yet remedy a problem that the politicians and ideologues have allowed to get out of hand; and I certainly hope that that is possible. But I guarantee my colleagues this, and I think that Mr. Hanson agrees, if I remember correctly in the book, that unless we begin to control our borders, unless we begin to actually get a handle on our borders, to be able to say that they are even somewhat secure, we can never, and I mean never, begin to think about a solution. Because although America is, of course, as has been stated many times, a nation of immigrants. It is a nation of immigration that has occurred at peaks and valleys where we have had significant increases over time in immigration and significant decreases. We have had periods of high immigration and periods of very low immigration, and usually those periods of high immigration are followed by periods of low immigration that give us enough time to actually integrate the people who have come here in the wave of immigration. That is not happening today, and that is desperately needed. We need a time out, Mr. Speaker. We need time as a Nation to integrate the people who have come here, to encourage them to become part of this American mosaic. But there are so many forces arrayed against that integration, against that process that I worry about our being able to accomplish it. I have stated on many occasions that we have something called a cult of multiculturalism that pervades our society, that encourages separation of groups in the country, again, the victimized classes. It encourages people to keep separate their language, keep separate their culture, even their political allegiances. It encourages them to keep citizenship of a country from which they came. So now we have 6 to 8 to 10 million, we are not sure how many, people who are living here with dual citizenship, with something that has never, ever been the case in the past. We have had 100,000 at any given time in the Nation, but in the last several years it has grown into the millions and maybe close to 10 million people. Again, we are not positive, but we know there are at least 6 million, which again is far more than we have ever had in the past, people who are claiming dual citizenship. Why is this happening, and what are the implications of that kind of a phenomenon? What does that mean for America? I suggest that the problems are significant and that they are real and they are problems that we must discuss on this floor and we must discuss in this body and in the other body and in the White House, even though they are distressing to some, even though they are certainly politically unpopular to talk about, even though we risk the epithets that are always attached and thrown at people who do try to discuss these issues. No one, no one, Mr. Speaker, enjoys being called names because they are committed to the concept of immigration reform. No one enjoys getting the kind of mail that we get and getting the kind of calls that I get. No one thinks that that is pleasurable. No one wants to be at odds with their own party, their own President over issues like this. Certainly I do not. But I assure my colleagues that the problem is so severe, at least I believe it to be so severe, that one must endure those things if they are to live up to the commitment they made when they took an oath of office to serve in this body. So tonight, as I say, among other things, I wanted to talk about individuals. I wanted to give my colleagues faces and names to go with the statistics that I oftentimes come to this body and present. There is another Web site that I might mention. It is called ImmigrationsHumanCost.org, from which I have taken a number of individual cases that I want to share with my colleagues tonight. As this site identifies, there are an enormous number of Americans who have been harmed by the criminals who pass through the Nation's open borders. For that reason, this section can only provide a symbolic tribute to the many unnamed victims who have been killed, raped, robbed, crippled, and otherwise personally violated. Remember, I mentioned earlier that there are really two categories of individuals who have been harmed by our country's immigration policy: the low-wage worker and the higher-skilled workers, and I will talk about them later also, those people who have been displaced in their jobs, thrown out of their jobs or are now underemployed because we have imported what is called H-1B or L-1 workers into this country by the hundreds of thousands, now reaching I think into the millions. These people have come over from India, primarily, but from all over the world, really, and taken jobs from American workers; and, again, we will talk about that. But those people are also victims of our open borders policy, and their lives deserve to be critiqued, and their problems deserve to be identified, especially in this body that allows this kind of a thing to go on. But first we are going to talk a little bit about the people who have been victimized by violent crime perpetrated by people who have come here illegally or have fled this country for the safe haven of Mexico and other countries that will not extradite them to the United States. The first one I might mention is a gentleman by the name of Kris Eggle. I mentioned him before. I told my colleagues that we are going to have, on September 10 and 11 that week, we are going to be holding a series of events; and on that evening of September 10 we will be holding a dinner honoring Mr. Eggle. We are handing out an award in his name. This will be an award given to someone who has served this Nation faithfully in a law enforcement capacity and who has either given his or her life in that quest or has done something extraordinary to help defend the Nation's borders. The murder of Kris Eggle. He was a park ranger in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona. It happened on August 9, 2002. It was very little noted by the media. We brought it to the attention of this body, this particular crime. I tried over and over again; and, finally, we did get some attention paid to it. I went to Mr. Eggle's funeral. He was 28 years old. I went to his funeral in Arizona, and I saw his family. I saw their tears, and I saw the tears of his colleagues, and I wept with them. He was a young man cut down in his prime, killed by an illegal alien who crossed the border for the purpose of evading the law in Mexico after they had committed several murders there in some sort of drug-related deal. Mr. Eggle was a valedictorian and an Eagle Scout who joined the National Park Service because he loved the outdoors. Organ Pipe, by the way, is considered to be the most dangerous of the national park system. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 illegal aliens and 700,000 pounds of drugs were intercepted in the park in 2001. Now that just gives us a hint of the volume of both the traffic in drugs and the traffic in people through that area, just that one area of our border. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 interdicted, 700,000 pounds of drugs. Can we imagine how much got by? I mean, they always estimate that at least five get by of every one person that gets intercepted at the border. A million people just through this area in one year. God knows how much illegal drugs were also moved through that particular area. Remember, just a tiny little area on our southern border. Imagine what that means across the whole border and across the northern border, 5,000 miles of border. The Eggle family is determined that the death will not be forgotten by working for real border control. Well, I commit myself and have committed myself to help the Eggles to do everything I possibly can to keep this young man's memory alive. Let us go on. There are others. There are many others. I am going to go through quite a few this evening. Because I want their memories to remain alive, and I want their families to know that somebody does care, and that somebody, many people in this body, hopefully, are going to join me to try to do something about this, to stop it, to make sure it does not happen to other Americans. David Nadel, a familiar community activist in Berkeley, California, owned the popular Ashkenaz dance club that featured eclectic music such as zydeco, cajun, klezmer and the blues. In 1996 he was murdered in the club by an apparent illegal alien Mexican named Juan Rivera Perez, whom Nadel had earlier ejected for harassing other patrons. Perez was in Ashkenaz as part of an English as a Second Language program graduation party. Police believe Perez escaped to Mexico, which is famously unhelpful in extraditing violent criminals. Despite the outcry from law enforcement and from victims and the press, our government does not insist on normal compliance in law enforcement from Mexican authorities. This is a theme we are going to revisit over and over in the lives of the people I am going to talk about here and in the crimes. They have gone to Mexico. They will not send them back here. Mexico first started out saying that if they faced the death penalty in the United States, they would not send them back because that was cruel and unusual punishment. They have now decided that even life imprisonment in the United States is cruel and unusual punishment. Let me say clearly that it presents this picture of Mexico with this benevolent society with a very sort of progressive, if you will, attitude about criminal justice. I will tell my colleagues this, Mr. Speaker. It is not uncommon at all that people get executed in Mexico for committing certain crimes. The difference is oftentimes the police do not wait for a trial to execute the perpetrator or even the alleged perpetrator. So it is not that they have this sort of attitude that, again, we have to be much more liberal in the way we treat criminals than in the United States. They could not care less how we treat criminals. Frankly, what they are doing, Mr. Speaker, is trying to use this as a way to leverage the United States into coming up with a "migration accord," something that many people in this body care about a great deal, have tried many times, as a matter of fact, to get past a migration accord. Now, what is this migration accord? It is simply an agreement between the United States and Mexico that certain people are hoping for that will, in fact, eventually create amnesty for all the people living here illegally, and the government of Mexico wants that so they use every kind of trick they can imagine to get us to do it, including the use of the extradition treaty with the United States and making it more difficult to get people back here to actually serve for their crimes. Another case of justice denied, the murderer of a Phoenix high school student, Tanee Natividad, merely crossed the border into Mexico to escape law enforcement, her murder. A local television station was able to track down the murderer in a bar just a few miles across the border without much effort. Max LaMadrid had no reason to hide because the Mexican Government actually helps violent criminals escape American justice. According to Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano, action by the Mexican Supreme Court making it more difficult to extradite criminals has "created an incentive for people to flee into Mexico as a safe harbor." True, Attorney General Napolitano, you have done absolutely nothing to help us change this situation, to help us address the problem. You are part of the problem. At one time Mexico would not extradite criminals who might be subject to the death penalty. Therefore, they have given a free pass to rapists, kidnappers and child molesters. In fact, the investigating reporter in this case found 100 cases of violent criminals from the Phoenix area escaping into Mexico in just a few years. Meanwhile, the grieving family of a 16-year-old Tanee gets no justice, like thousands of others in the Southwest. I want you to understand, Mr. Speaker, that for every single person I identify here, for every person whose name I bring to the attention of this body, there are literally hundreds, in fact, there are thousands and thousands of others who suffer the same sort of plight but whose names will not be brought to our attention, because for one thing, there simply is not time. We could be here for months, never once stopping in just identifying the names of the victims. But that is again what we hope to do, some of the things we hope to do on September 10 and 11 when we invite all people who have been victimized by our open borders to come to Washington, come to the Nation's Capital and express their concern, tell their story to their Representatives and to their Senators. That will be the next day's activities. On the 11th they will be visiting their Congressmen, their Senators, telling them about how they have been victimized by open borders. Mr. Speaker, we, of course, encourage everyone to go to that Web site and sign up, victimsvoice.org. Let us go on to Darlene Squires, the distraught mother of a disabled teenager, one of two girls who were raped on October 24, is pictured here on this page. Her daughter was one of two who were raped on October 21, 2002, by three members of a Salvadoran street gang located in Somerville, Massachusetts. Age 17 and 14, both victims are deaf and one has cerebral palsy. Miss Squires believed that the attacks were a retaliation against her family because her husband confronted the young men after they had harassed the Squires' son. Later reports indicated the men arrested for the crime were illegal aliens. Law enforcement officials who were concerned about increased violence from this, it is called MS-13 Gang, which was believed to have originated in part with soldiers and their families who left El Salvador. Local residents estimate the gang has more than 100 members in their community. An update a few months after the Squires crime showed that gang problem in the community has only gotten worse. The lives of many law enforcement officers have been lost at the hands of criminal and violent aliens. One such officer is David March. This is a gentleman I will talk about at some length. He was a Los Angeles County Sheriff. He was killed when he pulled over a car for a routine traffic stop. The driver was a dangerous Mexican drug dealer, Armando Garcia, which I have a picture here. Mr. Garcia had been deported twice, get that, he had been deported twice and had a long history of violent crimes. After shooting Sheriff March twice in the head, Garcia was able to escape and is believed to be in Mexico where officials refuse to send him back for trial. Garcia is also wanted for two attempted murders. The Attorneys General of all 50 States wrote to Attorney General Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin Powell to demand action on the extradition issue. Now, I want to go back and explain, deported twice. This means he simply came back across the border each time, and time and again this happens. This is not unique. This is not an aberration. That is my point in bringing this out. If this were something that happened, a horrible, tragic situation that we can say, well, gee, goodness knows that does not happen a lot. It happens all the time. It happens literally thousands of times across this country. This is the gentleman, Armando Garcia, who shot Sheriff March when he walked up to the car, then got out and shot him twice more in the head. I visited with Mrs. March not too long ago. I went to the memorial that is on a rather nondescript street in an industrial area in Los Angeles. Hundreds of thousands of cars traveling by all the time, every month or so and thousands of cars a day; and I do not know how many even notice this small memorial that is on the side of the street. But Mrs. March goes by all the time. And she stops and she gets out and she kneels down, and she says a prayer for her husband and the father of her child. And she says a prayer that her husband's killer will be extradited back to the United States and face justice so she can begin to put her life in order and put this event behind her, if you ever can, of course. I visited that place with her and she shed tears and I shed tears. And these incidents, as I say, point out that the statistics need to be reinforced with real names and real faces so that people understand they are not just numbers. And that these people have actually experienced what they have experienced as a result of policies either adopted by this body and this government or policies we refuse to adopt, policies that would actually begin to secure the border. It is certainly true, Mr. Speaker, that even if we did everything possible to secure our borders, even if we did everything we could possibly do, that things like this still may happen. Certainly they will. People may still be able to get across the border. Surely that is true. We will never be able to secure it 100 percent, but I guarantee you this, at least we will be able to say to Mrs. March and all of the other families of all of the other victims that we have tried everything we can do to protect them and their loved ones. We cannot say that today. In all good conscience we cannot say that today. Now, compared with many others we have identified who suffered violent crime, Barbara Vidlak got off easy and was just a victim of identity theft. Still you would not want her problems. The rip-off of her Social Security number by an illegal immigrant has caused Barbara's phone to be turned off, loss of health insurance for her two children, as well as extra money out of her pocket for credit checks and expenses such as lost time at work. She has also had to act as a detective to track down the culprit who filled her life with turmoil and stress. The reporting on this crime is notable for its relentless sympathy for the perpetrator, even when the damage to the victim is obvious for all to see. Rather than note how illegal immigration is not a victimless crime, reported Cindy Gonzalez, "an immigrant rights activist" who says that in some ways both women are victims, both Ms. Vidlak and the person who stole her identity. No, I would tell the immigrants rights activist, that is absolutely and patently untrue. Ms. Vidlak is the aggrieved party. She is the victim, not the perpetrator, not the person who stole her identity. How about 18-year-old Tricia Taylor of Detroit? She was in court in December of 2002 to hear the plea of the illegal alien who caused her to lose both legs above the knees. Jose Carcamo was driving under the influence of alcohol and speeding when he drove over a curb and smashed Taylor into a wall. One report stated that Carcamo had 17 violations since 1995. Another noted he was drag racing at the time of the crash. It was agreed that the car was traveling between 50 and 75 miles per hour on a street posted for 25 miles per hour. Taylor's companion, Noah Menard, suffered a fractured skull and collar bone, as well as requiring 8 pins to reconstruct her mangled elbow. The INS has twice begun deportation proceedings to return him to El Salvador, but regrettably did not follow through. Carcamo will be out of jail in a few years, but Tricia Taylor faces a lifetime of pain and disability because of another failure of the INS to remove a dangerous alien. Another American stymied in pursuit of justice for a murder trial is Ron Cornell. His son Joey was killed by Gonzalo Villalobos who escaped to Mexico and like so many others is being protected by the Mexican Government's refusal to extradite. At one point, Gonzalo Villalobos' whereabouts in El Salvador were known precisely, but there is no extradition cooperation with that nation either. You all remember perhaps that after the devastation of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 the United States sent $110 million in disaster relief to El Salvador, but they will not even talk to us about an extradition treaty. In June 2002, four residents of Whidbey Island in Washington were the shooting victims of a Jamaican national who was evidently frustrated that his plans had been ruined to get a green card through a marriage to an American woman. Preston Dean Douglas angered his girlfriend Holly Swartz because he sexually abused her 7-year-old daughter. When Holly moved herself and her child into her mother's house, Douglas reacted by shooting Holly, her mother, Marjorie Monnet, the mother of eight children, Marjorie's son Bruce, and Bruce's girlfriend, Sierra Klug. Holly and Marjorie were killed. Bruce and Sierra survived. Douglas shot and killed himself. Reportedly Douglas was in the country illegally, though he was working as a bouncer at a local Chinese restaurant. One day after New Year's 2003, 6-year-old Jose Soto was riding his bike around the parking lot in his parents' apartment house when he was struck and severely injured by a man backing out in a red truck. Witnesses were shocked when the man stopped and pulled the child from under the truck and roughly threw him aside before speeding off. At this writing, Jose is in critical condition in the Houston hospital and the perpetrator is believed to be on his way to Mexico, if not already there. The man's name was released a few days later, Jose Ines Morales. As noted above, once a criminal has reached Mexico, he has effectively eluded the law permanently. Sister Helen Chaska was murdered in late September 2002 by being strangled with her rosary beads. The beads were found embedded in her neck. She was also raped, as was another nun who accompanied Sister Helen during walking prayers. Both women were in Klamath Falls, Oregon, doing missionary work when the crimes occurred. Her accused murderer is Maximiliano Esparza, who is in the United States illegally. He was convicted of 1988 of robbery and kidnapping in Los Angeles. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison, and he was released in 1992 and was on probation until 1995. By law, this man should have been deported to Mexico after his release in 1992. Instead, the INS allowed him to remain in the United States and commit even more heinous crimes. By the way, I want to harken back a moment to statistics I gave earlier. Right now, there are approximately 400,000 people who have been ordered to be deported; that is to say, they have somehow gotten themselves afoul of the law. They have gotten into the criminal justice system, and they have been found guilty by a court. Usually, this is an immigration court, and they have been ordered deported. Now they are supposed to leave from the courtroom and go right into the hands of the INS and be deported to their country of origin, but we do not, in fact, deport people very often, and the INS really does not pay an awful lot of attention, so that 400,000 of the millions who have gone through this process are now walking around the United States. Eighty thousand of those, at least 80,000 of those are criminals who are violent criminals, felons, rapists, murderers, robbers, walking around our streets because the INS failed to do their job, committing crimes like the ones I am going through here. It has been a decade since Oregon State trooper Bret Clodfelter was murdered by an illegal alien, but the crime has not been forgotten. Trooper Clodfelter of Klamath Falls had arrested three Mexican men for being drunk and disorderly, then offered them a ride and was murdered for his generosity. The prosecutor sought the death penalty, but one dissenting juror meant Francisco Manzo-Hernandez got life in prison instead. To add to the tragedy, Clodfelter's widow Rene committed suicide a year after her husband was murdered. The couple had been married just over a month when her husband was murdered. Officer Sheila Herring was lost to a bullet from an illegal alien in an early morning altercation at a Norfolk bar on January 16. The accused man, Mario Roberto Keen, a citizen of Jamaica, had reportedly shot a man in the bar after the police were called. When several officers arrived, Keen opened fire and shot Officer Herring, who died later in surgery. Keen was shot and killed at the scene. He had been sentenced to 5 years in prison in 1990 for the selling of cocaine and was later deported but somehow got back into the United States. Imagine that. Keen attempted to reenter the United States again in 1997, was reportedly barred from entering. It is not known when Keen was successful in entering the United States, but he did get back in. He got back in time to kill Sheila Herring. From all accounts she was an excellent police officer, loved her job. She had been a cop in Detroit for 10 years before moving to Virginia. She was 39, had an 18-year-old daughter. Angie Morfin of Salinas, California, testified before the House Immigration Subcommittee in June, 1999, about the murder of her 13-year-old son by an illegal alien gangster. Her boy Ruben was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and was shot down by a Mexican who escaped to Mexico. Her testimony also noted how the Latino community in her town wants immigration laws enforced, particularly to deal with the problem of illegal gangs that are responsible for a lot of violent criminal activity. Since her son's murder, Angie Morfin has spoken out about the need for more border patrol agents and other enforcement to make her community safer so no other mother must suffer the loss she has. Thirteen-year-old Laura Ayala went missing in March, 2002, taken just a few feet from her home in Houston. At this writing there is no child, no body, although blood identified as being hers was identified in 2002 in the car of a man believed to be connected with her abduction. Because of some evidence that she had been taken to Mexico, part of the search has been there. One complication was that Houston's policy of sanctuary, now get this, Mr. Speaker, Houston's policy of sanctuary which disallows police from investigating a person's citizenship status is in effect. Illegal alien Walter Alexander Sorto was in police hands for traffic tickets but could not be deported because of the sanctuary policy of the city of Houston. He is believed to be connected in Laura Ayala's disappearance which occurred several months after the ticket problem. Houston police officer John Nickell testified before Congress about how sanctuary laws inhibit the effectiveness of beat cops to deal with criminals and to prevent crime. Let me talk about this sanctuary policy for just a moment, because we had a fascinating vote on the House floor not too many nights ago. It was in the debate over the first appropriations bill for the Homeland Security Department, and I brought to the floor an amendment. The amendment said simply this, that if any city, like Houston, refuses to cooperate with the INS, has this sanctuary policy, then they could not apply for funds under the Homeland Security Act and any grant from any agency covered by the Homeland Security Department. Now, I remind my colleagues that any city wishing to obtain the grant, all they have to do, of course, is to change this policy of sanctuary for people who are breaking the law and living here illegally, but this amendment went down. I think we got 102 votes out of 435 votes, amazing, amazing as it was to me certainly that we could not even get a majority of the people in this body to agree that the laws that we have already passed in the United States should be enforced. Amazing. The danger on the highway from truckloads of illegal aliens in border areas has been increasing drastically. It is not unusual for a van full of aliens to speed down the road in the wrong direction, avoiding American law enforcement, causing death and injury to both American citizens and foreigners. One of the worst examples took place near San Diego June 25, 2002, where seven people were killed, at least 31 injured when a van tried to avoid a border checkpoint by turning the lights off and speeding against oncoming traffic in the wrong lane. Larry S. Baca of Albuquerque was killed when his Ford was smashed head-on by the immigrant van and knocked airborne. On March 10, 2003, two men were killed and 20 people injured when a stolen truck loaded with illegal aliens tried to outrun American authorities. Dana Pevia was kidnapped from her North Carolina school bus stop in 1999 when she was only 11. In March, 2003, she was able to escape her captivity in Mexico and visit the American consulate in Guadalajara. The officials there contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and, through them, reached Dana's mother Wanda. Wanda returned home a few days later with her two children. The apparent kidnapper Hector Frausto, a Mexican construction worker, was arrested in North Carolina on March 27. Dana was evidently forcibly kept captive by his family in Mexico for much of that time. She was only able to get away because she had the help of a sympathetic neighbor. The unasked question is why the obvious suspect's family in Mexico was not investigated for 4 years. Was the unhelpful Mexican legal system being obstructionist yet again? Then there was the Marti family. Sean, just 24 years old, and his daughter Sage, who was 5 months old, were killed February 27 by a drunk driver, illegal alien, who was driving the wrong way on Highway 84 in Idaho. Natalie Marti was in a coma after the head-on crash and returned slowly to waking consciousness over a period of weeks. With coma victims, full mental functioning and memory can take much longer. She had attended college in Boise where she and Sean managed an apartment complex. Edgar Vasquez Hernandez, who worked as a house framer, was charged with two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of aggravated driving. Court records show Hernandez was intoxicated at the time of the crash. That story is repeated over and over and over again. Maria Suarez was only 16 and living in Los Angeles when she was sold for $200 to a 68-year-old man, Anselmo Covarrubias, who presented himself in the neighborhood as a brujo, a magician. He raped and abused her, utilizing brainwashing where he had said he had powers of the devil, as he had done to many Mexican girls. He held them in virtual slavery. Another woman bludgeoned Mr. Covarrubias to death, and Suarez hid the weapon but was not directly involved in the killing. Still, she served 22 years in prison and is slated to be released within a year. Phoenix police officer Robert Sitek was shot four times during a traffic stop altercation with an illegal alien that became violent. He and his partner David Thwing were on routine patrol when a red truck cut off their squad car. When the officers stopped the truck, the driver began shooting. Officer Sitek was in cardiac arrest by the time he reached the hospital and lost a considerable amount of blood. Shooter Francisco A. Gallardo was a Mexican citizen who had recently completed a 7-year prison term for aggravated assault. He had been deported after his release but had returned to Arizona. He was shot and killed as he tried to escape by Officer Thwing. David Lazarus, a familiar name to the readers of the San Francisco Chronicle business pages, and the reporter appears occasionally on television news shows like This Week In Northern California on the local PBS affiliate. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time for this evening, and I will return with stories of many, many more people who are victims of our porous borders. END