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90–205 PDF 2003

THE IMPACT OF THE DRUG TRADE ON BORDER

SECURITY

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,

DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

APRIL 15, 2003

Serial No. 108–70

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

WILLIAM J. JANKLOW, South Dakota

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS BELL, Texas

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

PETER SIRH, Staff Director

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Deputy Staff Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHILIP M. SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

CHRIS BELL, Texas

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

CHRISTOPHER DONESA, Staff Director

NICK COLEMAN, Professional Staff Member and Counsel

NICOLE GARRETT, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 15, 2003 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Beeson, Paul A., Assistant Chief Patrol Agent, El Paso Sector, U.S.

Border Patrol, Bureau of Customs and Border Protection; Frank

Deckert, Superintendent, Big Bend National Park, National Park Service; Sandalio Gonzalez, Special Agent in Charge, El Paso Division Office, Drug Enforcement Administration; and David Longoria, Interim

Port Director, El Paso Port of Entry, Bureau of Customs and Border

Protection ....................................................................................................... 7

Cook, Bob, president, Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce; Ruben

Garcia, truancy prevention specialist, Ysleta Independent School District; and Jose Luis Soria, clinical deputy director, Aliviane Drug Treatment Center ................................................................................................... 89

Leon, Carlos, chief, El Paso Police Department; and Leo Samaniego,

sheriff, El Paso County Sheriff’s Department ............................................ 67

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Beeson, Paul A., Assistant Chief Patrol Agent, El Paso Sector, U.S.

Border Patrol, Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 9

Cook, Bob, president, Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 92

Deckert, Frank, Superintendent, Big Bend National Park, National Park

Service, prepared statement of .................................................................... 19

Garcia, Ruben, truancy prevention specialist, Ysleta Independent School

District, prepared statement of .................................................................... 98

Gonzalez, Sandalio, Special Agent in Charge, El Paso Division Office,

Drug Enforcement Administration, prepared statement of ....................... 30

Leon, Carlos, chief, El Paso Police Department, prepared statement of ..... 69

Longoria, David, Interim Port Director, El Paso Port of Entry, Bureau

of Customs and Border Protection, prepared statement of ....................... 42

Samaniego, Leo, sheriff, El Paso County Sheriff’s Department, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 73

Soria, Jose Luis, clinical deputy director, Aliviane Drug Treatment Center, prepared statement of ............................................................................ 104

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THE IMPACT OF THE DRUG TRADE ON

BORDER SECURITY

TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, DRUG POLICY AND

HUMAN RESOURCES,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

El Paso, TX.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., at

Chamizal National Memorial, El Paso, TX, Hon. Mark Souder

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Souder, Deal and Reyes.

Staff present: Nick Coleman, professional staff member and

counsel; and Nicole Garrett, clerk.

Mr. SOUDER. Good morning, and thank you all for coming.

Today, our subcommittee returns to continue its exploration of

the status of security and law enforcement along the southern

Texas and New Mexico border. Since the summer of 2001, this subcommittee has been making a comprehensive study of our Nation’s

borders, including a field hearing last month in Sells, AZ. The subcommittee has focused particular attention on the effectiveness of

the Federal law enforcement agencies entrusted with protecting

and administering our Nation’s borders and ports of entry. Last

summer, the subcommittee released a comprehensive report on

these issues, but our study continues.

I was asking whether we had a copy of the report here. It is a

most comprehensive study and you can get it on our Web site or

you can contact our office. It is about 100 pages, we took everything and put it together in a comprehensive study of the north

and south borders. And in fact, the new Homeland Security Committee that I am on, on Subcommittee on Borders, is using that as

a premise for all the Members. Congressman Camp, the chairman,

has given it to all the Members and asked them to read it before

we start our hearing process.

Today’s hearing is intended to focus on the problem of illegal

drug smuggling along the southern border, and the related crime

and damage caused by that smuggling. The southern border still

sees far more illegal activity than the northern border and it presents severe challenges for effective law enforcement. The southern

border runs through deserts, mountains and rivers, through unpopulated areas as well as cities and suburbs, through National

Parks, wildlife refuges, Native American reservations, and even

military bases. Questions of overlapping law enforcement agency

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jurisdiction can come into play, and we intend to address those

issues today.

The El Paso area has been the site of some of the worst drug

smuggling activity in the country for decades and the problem is

not going away. Drug seizures here rose significantly from fiscal

year 2001–2002, even as they fell in other parts of the country. In

nearby Hudspeth County, the sheriff’s department reports that

smugglers are so inventive that they are even using horses to

evade local deputies and patrols. Drug smugglers have been operating in the nearby Big Bend National Park for years, and that park

was named the second most dangerous park in America in 2002,

second only to Arizona’s Organ Pipe National Monument, where we

were just last month. And in October of last year, the U.S. Border

Patrol agent Valerie Jaramillo was shot in the leg by marijuana

smugglers about 70 miles east of El Paso. The narcotics themselves

also take their toll on the lives of local residents through drug

abuse, in the form of lost life and potential.

These facts illustrate the serious challenges facing law enforcement and local citizens along the southern Texas and New Mexico

borders. Drug smuggling and related crime have taken a toll on the

environment and the quality of life for local residents, besides presenting a threat to the entire Nation.

These issues are all very important and extremely urgent, and

we look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about the

ways to address them.

I first want to thank Congressman Silvestre Reyes for joining us

today and for the assistance that he and his staff provided to our

subcommittee in setting up this hearing. We have worked together

before on this issue, the only other time I have been in El Paso.

He has been a leader in Congress on this issue.

We also welcome the representatives of the Federal agencies primarily responsible for dealing with drug smuggling in this region;

namely, the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The subcommittee is vitally interested in ensuring the effective functioning of these agencies and we will continue to work

with them and their staff to ensure the continued security and effective administration of our Nation’s borders and its protection

from narcotics.

Congressman Deal, the vice chairman of this committee, and I

yesterday flew in—he flew in, I drove down from San Antonio—to

Laredo. We spent many wee hours of the morning on Sunday night,

Monday morning with the Port Authority there, with the different

officials and at the border. Then yesterday went from Laredo down

through Falcon Lake, Zapata, went up in a helicopter down on the

river with the Border Patrol, went to numerous crossings looking

at the challenges on the south border.

And as I mentioned earlier, I am also on the Homeland Security

Subcommittee and we will be doing a number of joint hearings

with that subcommittee and Homeland Security. And part of our

mission, in addition to oversight of the Justice Department and all

narcotics issues and related issues, is to make sure that in the new

department, because Customs, Border Patrol, INS, Coast Guard

have been much, along with DEA, of our fight against narcotics.

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And we cannot lose that as we are working through the terrorist

issues. That is why we have a staff person, Roger Mackin, over at

Homeland Security, to try to coordinate these things and hopefully

we can be more efficient. I know there is a lot of concern not only

within the agencies but within Congress, that the other missions

of these agencies are not lost as we also focus on Homeland Security.

Today, we welcome Mr. Paul Beeson, Assistant Chief Patrol

Agent of the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector; Mr. David

Longoria, Port Director of the El Paso Port of Entry; Mr. Sandalio

Gonzalez, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s El Paso Division Office.

As this subcommittee is also concerned with the problem of drug

smuggling at our Nation’s parks and wildlife refuges, we are also

pleased to be joined by Mr. Frank Deckert, Superintendent of Big

Bend National Park, representing the National Park Service. I am

also a member of the House Resources Committee, and the Parks

Subcommittee and Fish and Wildlife Subcommittee, so I have had

many opportunities to visit our national parks and wildlife refuges

and to meet with the Interior Department personnel who manage

them. We hope at this hearing to focus special attention on the law

enforcement issues faced by your agency, so we thank you again for

your participation.

When examining border policies, we must also seek the input of

representatives of the local community whose lives are directly affected by changes at the border. Representing the local law enforcement agencies entrusted with protecting local citizens from drug

smugglers and other criminals, we are also pleased today to be

joined by Chief Carlos Leon of the El Paso Police Department;

Sheriff Leo Samaniego of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department.

We are also joined by several witnesses who can testify to the impact that drug smuggling has on schools, neighborhoods and local

businesses: Mr. Bob Cook, president of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, I am sure will also point out the importance of

the commerce and the tradeoffs that we have to make on security

and trade to make sure our economy keeps working as well. Mr.

Ruben Garcia, truancy prevention specialist at the Ysleta Independent School District; and Mr. Jose Luis Soria, clinical deputy director at Aliviane Drug Treatment Center.

We thank everyone for taking time this morning to join with us

for this important hearing.

According to subcommittee rules, I will yield next to the vice

chairman of the committee, before going to our guest, who we are

going to have participate in our hearing today, Congressman

Reyes, our host Congressman.

Mr. Deal.

Mr. DEAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, good morning.

Thank you all for being here, and more importantly, thank you

for what you do every day working on the border trying to continue

our efforts to protect our homeland and to deal with the apparently

never-ending problem of the drug war.

Representing a non-border State, some people are surprised to

learn that what you do here on the Texas/Mexico border has a lot

to do with what impacts my Congressional District in northern

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Georgia. The former Immigration & Naturalization Service’s most

current estimates show that Georgia has about 228,000 illegal immigrants, ranking my State as the seventh largest in illegal immigration population in the United States. As those numbers would

imply, illegal immigration poses significant problems in my District, one of those inherent problems being illegal drug trafficking

and the general drug trade.

A report released by the U.S. Department of Justice in January

of this year, cites Atlanta, GA, which is just south of my District,

as a regional drug transportation hub and distribution center of

drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines, all of

which are said to come primarily from Mexico.

As you all know, one of the problems that drug trade brings with

it is that of gang activity. Mexican gangs are said to be the primary

transporters and wholesalers of drugs in Georgia. The DEA and the

Internal Revenue Service estimate that criminal groups transfer,

primarily to Mexico and Colombia, approximately $2 million per

week from money coming from business there in Georgia.

What is even more troubling is that in my District, we have recently seen a significant increase in the number of murders committed, most of which have been directly linked to Hispanic gang

activity and of course, directly related to drug activity.

I want to reiterate the fact that the problems associated with illegal immigration and drug trafficking stretch far beyond the border right here. They stretch to States, cities and counties all across

our country. You all have an important job with huge risks and obstacles that you face every day. I commend you for accepting the

challenge of securing our borders. I want to thank you again for

what you are doing.

However, we all know that we can do more. I look forward to

hearing from each of you as to what we, as Members of Congress,

can do to make your jobs more efficient and to make our country

safer and a more secure place to live.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. First, to do one procedural thing. I ask

unanimous consent that all Members present be permitted to participate in the hearing. Hearing no objection, it is so ordered.

I would now like to recognize Mr. Reyes, a distinguished Member

and Representative in Congress from this area, a long-time leader

on these issues.

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Souder and

Vice Chairman Deal, welcome to El Paso, and in particular, welcome to one of the jewels that we are very proud of here, the

Chamizal Park, which was created as a way of settling a boundary

dispute that existed for many years with Mexico. And it was set

up as a venue to have our citizens enjoy the kind of relationship

that we have enjoyed with Mexico for over 70 years. So welcome

to this very historic place.

And I want to in particular thank Superintendent Isabel Montez,

who runs this national park here, for allowing us to be here and

hosting us in this very beautiful facility.

I am honored to be part of this hearing today, Mr. Chairman. As

you and the vice chairman know, I have dedicated a large portion

of my adult career to the issues that you will be covering here this

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morning, because for 261⁄2 years, I was a Federal law enforcement

agent with the Border Patrol and with the Immigration & Naturalization Service, including 12 of those as a chief, first down in

south Texas where I know you have just recently visited. I was

Chief of the McAllen Sector. And subsequent to that was reassigned to El Paso and actually retired as the Chief here in El Paso

in charge of west Texas and southern New Mexico—or all of New

Mexico technically, but primarily focused on the border regions in

New Mexico. And retired to run for Congress.

I know we share a lot of common interests and when you were

considering doing the border field hearings, I very much appreciated that you decided to come to El Paso. We think we have both

a good news story here, as well as a typical area where we face

many challenges. And knowing of both your interest in homeland

defense, I know that the testimony you are going to hear today is

going to, I hope, add to the information and certainly the amount

of evidence that is pretty compelling, that when you pay attention

to border communities and when we focus on the front lines of the

war—and today, we are not just talking about the war on drugs,

we are talking about an area that is susceptible to not just narcotics, but gun runners, certainly terrorists.

I can tell you during the first Gulf war, being the Chief in

McAllen Sector, we turned over about 16 suspected terrorists to the

FBI. So that kind of work is going on now. I know a lot of the agencies cannot get into that because of its classified nature, but I can

assure you that protecting America’s borders, especially, the 2,000-

mile border with Mexico, is a critical and vital part of—or should

be a vital part of strategy for homeland defense. As you know, Mr.

Chairman, we have been working with Secretary Ridge and members of his agency to make sure that there is a full and comprehensive strategy in place.

Since you drove here from San Antonio, you know how distance

is really significant in Texas and along the U.S./Mexico border. And

you know the diversity that our various agencies have to cover, you

know the immense challenge that they have to address. So doing

these kinds of field hearings is a critical and important part, not

just of the learning process, but of the understanding of the magnitude of the challenge that is faced by a lot of my former colleagues that I actually worked with before going to Congress.

Today, I know you are going to be briefed, both by JTF–6, Joint

Task Force 6. I was with General Yengling yesterday at the funeral

of one of our young men that we lost from the 507th and he mentioned to me that he was looking forward to briefing both of you

and also the El Paso Intelligence Center, both I think critical and

vital components in our strategy in homeland defense.

So, thank you for coming to El Paso, I hope your stay is an enjoyable one. Regrettably we are going to have a little bit of wind

today, it is not the kind of—and Bob Cook will verify, I see him

back there—that most of the time we really truly have Chamber

of Commerce weather here. When we were dealing with what I

think was a brutal winter this year, the weather here was fine and

the biggest problem was not being able to be here because of our

schedule over there.

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But I hope you enjoy El Paso, I know you have been here before,

and I hope you come back again and, of course, my colleague, I actually lived 2 years in Georgia, in Brunswick, I was part of the

group that set up the Border Patrol and INS Academy in 1977 and

1978, when we moved the Academy to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. So I enjoyed my time in Georgia, so I hope

you enjoy your time in Texas and in particular out here in El Paso.

And with that, Mr. Chairman, let me again thank you for doing

this and I offer my assistance, both for this committee and certainly for homeland defense, which I have been—I tried hard to get

on that, but you know, there are politics involved in some of this

stuff and so—[laughter]—on my side of the aisle, I came up short.

But I have a tremendous interest and I have offered to both the

chairman and certainly our ranking member, that I am available

to assist in whatever capacity, and I make the same offer to you

both as part of the Homeland Defense Committee and certainly in

your capacity here.

And if there is no objection, I would like to submit a written

statement for the record.

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. As Congressman Reyes noted, I will be meeting

with a number of people here, actually we are spending 2 days because we are also meeting with the Southwest Border HIDTA and

the local HIDTA. We are redoing the reauthorization as well

through our committee and expect the markup to move through in

the next couple of weeks. So we have been doing that. Although the

focus today in the hearing is on the border, we are doing other

things while we are here as well.

Before proceeding, I would also like to take care of another procedural matter. First, I ask unanimous consent that all Members

have 5 legislative days to submit written statements and questions

for the hearing record, that any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the record. Without objection, it is so ordered.

It is a longstanding congressional protocol that government witnesses representing the administration testify first. So our first

panel consists of those witnesses. Would each of you on the first

panel rise and raise your right hands because as an oversight committee, it is our standard practice, because we do Federal executive

branch oversight, to have all witnesses sworn in. So far we have

actually gone after two since I have been for perjury. So do not

worry too much, but it is best if, when taking the oath, you are

completely accurate in your responses.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded in the affirmative.

The witnesses will now be recognized for opening statements. We

will ask each of you to summarize your testimony in 5 minutes.

Your full statement will be inserted in the record, in addition to

any other comments you would like.

We will first recognize Mr. Beeson on behalf of the U.S. Border

Patrol.

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STATEMENTS OF PAUL A. BEESON, ASSISTANT CHIEF PATROL

AGENT, EL PASO SECTOR, U.S. BORDER PATROL, BUREAU OF

CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION; FRANK DECKERT, SUPERINTENDENT, BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, NATIONAL

PARK SERVICE; SANDALIO GONZALEZ, SPECIAL AGENT IN

CHARGE, EL PASO DIVISION OFFICE, DRUG ENFORCEMENT

ADMINISTRATION; AND DAVID LONGORIA, INTERIM PORT

DIRECTOR, EL PASO PORT OF ENTRY, BUREAU OF CUSTOMS

AND BORDER PROTECTION

Mr. BEESON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished committee

members, I am pleased to have the opportunity to appear before

you today to discuss the El Paso Border Patrol Sector’s operations

and law enforcement initiatives to secure the U.S. border in west

Texas and New Mexico. My name is Paul Beeson and I am an Assistant Chief for the Border Patrol in El Paso, which, as you now,

is part of the newly formed Bureau of Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security.

I would like to begin by thanking you and your colleagues for

this opportunity to speak with you today, and more importantly for

the support and resources you have provided to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. Those resources are extremely important to the Bureau and to the Border Patrol as we continue to

apply them toward securing our Nation’s borders. The challenges

to securing our borders and protecting the homeland are many. The

importance of the support, funding and resources you have provided to meet this challenge cannot be overstated.

The El Paso Sector is responsible for securing 289 miles of our

border with Mexico. To do that, we have four Border Patrol stations in the two westernmost counties of Texas and eight stations

in the State of New Mexico. This sector’s area of operations is divided into three main corridors: The Fabens Corridor, the El Paso

Corridor and the Deming Corridor.

The El Paso area is a major hub for the smuggling of people, narcotics and other contraband. There is a tremendous amount of infrastructure, both within El Paso and to the south of us in Ciudad

Juarez, in terms of ease of transportation, availability of hotels and

routes of transportation that can be readily used in furtherance of

illicit activity. The ability to use legitimate trade routes, transportation and business for illegal activity, contributes to the busy activity of the Border Patrol in El Paso.

The El Paso Sector maintains a large amount of operational diversity as we continue to enforce our Nation’s laws, and all of these

operations are aimed the increasing deterrence and securing the

border. Operation Hold the Line continues to be the mainstay of

our operations in the El Paso Corridor, which is comprised of the

Ysleta, El Paso and Santa Teresa Stations. The control we have

achieved in this corridor has been through a combination of forward deployment and secondary operations.

Both the Fabens and Deming Corridors continue to present enforcement challenges. We have noticed that as we achieve successes

in other locations, the Fabens and Deming Corridors are experiencing increases in activity that represent a shift in traffic from more

secure portions of the border.

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We continue to employ every available means at our disposal to

combat the illegal activity that occurs in this area. There are six

permanent traffic checkpoints strategically located throughout this

sector, the purpose of which is to detect and interdict illegal immigrants and narcotics. As a result of these checkpoint operations, we

frequently encounter violations of other laws as well. Traffic checkpoint operations have been responsible for a number of apprehended persons wanted in other jurisdictions for narcotics violations and other crimes, including murder.

In summary, traffic checkpoints provide an additional defense to

deter and detect immigration violators, narcotic smugglers and possible terrorists.

This sector is fortunate enough to have deployed several advances in technology that greatly assist the agents in performing

their mission. One such technological advance is the Remote Video

Surveillance System, which as been strategically employed within

the El Paso, Ysleta and Deming areas of operation. While the number of sites is small, when compared with the need, these remotely

controlled surveillance cameras provide tremendous enhancement

to our agents’ ability to patrol and control an area. There are a

total of 29 sites located within the aforementioned areas. These

cameras provide coverage of 42 miles over the 289 miles of this sector. Expanded deployment of this system is vital to this sector’s

ability to enhance and maintain control of our piece of the border.

The sector is actively engaged with officials from the Government

of Mexico in addressing the problems of safety along the border.

The El Paso Sector staffs a Mexican Liaison Unit that is in daily

communication with law enforcement, military and other government officials from Mexico that work along our common border.

Through the Mexican Liaison, we have been able to improve and

coordinate communication with Mexican law enforcement officials.

Our liaison efforts also include numerous law enforcement agencies here in the United States. The Border Patrol participates in

the Federal Bureau of Investigation Joint Terrorism Task Force

and other task forces within the Drug Enforcement Administration

and the U.S. Marshal’s Service, to name a few. Our coordination

in these arenas has been invaluable to the overall success of these

task forces.

In discussing the challenges of the El Paso Sector, I would be remiss if I did not mention the tremendous individual efforts of the

men and women who patrol our border every day and make the

largest contribution to the successes experienced in El Paso.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much. And now I would like to recognize Mr. Frank Deckert, the Superintendent of the Big Bend National Park.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Beeson follows:]

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Mr. DECKERT. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to

present the efforts being made by the National Park Service to protect visitors and resources in national parks and mitigate the impact of illegal drug trafficking in Big Bend National Park. With me

today are my colleagues, Isabel Montez, Superintendent of

Chamizal National Memorial; Jacques Whitworth, Superintendent

of Padre Island National Seashore; Bruce Malloy, Chief Ranger of

Amistad National Recreation Area and Mark Speir, Chief Ranger

of Big Bend National Park. If you have any questions about any

of the other park areas in Texas, they would be happy to answer

them.

Protecting national parks along the Mexican border is no longer

about simply protecting landscapes, plants and animals. At stake

is the safety of our citizens and the agency’s own employees, as

well as the preservation of some of our Nation’s unique natural and

cultural features.

Seven units of the National Park System share approximately

365 miles of border with Mexico and 72 miles of seashore, and are

directly impacted by increased illegal border activity. Big Bend National Park alone, shares 245 miles of border with Mexico, nearly

13 percent of the entire U.S./Mexico border. These seven areas

hosted more than 3.8 million visitors in 2002.

Great attention has been focused on one national park unit and

the death of a ranger there, where threats and illegal activities

originating outside the United States grow in numbers. The problems at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument are emblematic of

how increased enforcement at urban crossings on the part of the

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, now part of the Department of

Homeland Security, has pushed more crime onto adjacent public

land.

Here in Texas, similar problems are just beginning, but are multiplying exponentially. In Big Bend National Park, more than 6,000

pounds of marijuana were seized within the park in January 2003,

more than all the total seizures in 2002. Aware of the huge impacts

on parklands in Arizona, we are presented with the opportunity to

be proactive here in Texas. However, if we fail to act quickly and

decisively, the opportunity to prevent similar impacts will be lost.

The NPS in Texas actively participates in three High Intensity

Drug Trafficking Area [HIDTA] partnerships. HIDTA facilitates coordination of equipment and information between Federal, State

and local law enforcement agencies to address illegal drug activity.

As a funded participant in west Texas HIDTA, Big Bend National

Park implemented a narcotic detection canine program, placing a

trained ranger/handler and a drug interdiction dog directly on the

border. Both Amistad National Recreation Area and Padre Island

National Seashore are unfunded participants in other HIDTA partnerships providing cooperative support to interdiction efforts in

those parks.

The NPS and agencies in the Department of Homeland Security

work together on a daily basis at Big Bend National Park to share

intelligence, to provide mutual support and to investigate reports

of undocumented aliens and smuggling activity. Two Border Protection agents are currently stationed at and reside in the park.

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The NPS has responded to the threats along the Mexican border

in Texas by significantly increasing the number of law enforcement

rangers at border parks. The fiscal year 2004 Intermountain Region border park law enforcement priorities reflect an additional 14

ranger positions. Big Bend National Park has 11 protection rangers

and will add 3 more, using the $300,000 in base funding increase

in fiscal year 2003. The region committed $35,000 for training for

special event and incident management teams in fiscal year 2003.

NPS and partner agencies provide advanced law enforcement training and tactical tracking, use of electronic surveillance equipment

and other topics.

Due to the escalating threats facing park rangers, NPS intends

to make a 2-week course in special operations tactics a standard

for all rangers assigned to border parks in Arizona and Texas. NPS

is implementing a field training evaluation program that will provide each new ranger recruit with 12 weeks of field training with

emphasis on improving officer safety.

In May 2002, the Department’s Bureau of Customs & Border

Protection closed the unofficial Big Bend National Park border

crossings, historically used at the Mexican villages of Boquillas,

Santa Elena and San Vicente. Park managers are working with the

Department’s Bureau of Customs Inspections branch to explore the

possibility of establishing some type of official crossing at one or

two of these points. The NPS would support the restoration of

these primitive crossing so that our neighbors in the Mexican villages will once again enjoy the benefits of tourist income. We believe that one of our best protections against terrorists entering the

United States at these points is a friendly local population whose

quality of life depends more on tourism than on illegal activities.

In the interim, however, rangers are supporting the closure of the

border at all crossings.

The NPS has been proactive in identifying and solving problems

related to border law enforcement issues. However, park staffs in

the field seem to be dealing with new challenges on a daily basis.

They would like to be reassured that if further help is needed, they

could count on support from the American people through their

elected representatives. In the meantime, we will continue to identify problems and seek creative solutions that involve neighbors

and partners on both sides of the border. We believe this approach

will help to protect our parks, our visitors, our staffs and our country.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement and I would be

happy to answer any questions you or other members of the committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Deckert follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Our next witness is Sandy Gonzalez. I was in the

Indian region where I have been far too many times, I think nine

times now, because you cannot look at cocaine and heroin and even

much of the marijuana that comes across here or anywhere else

without trying to get into the Indian region. But I believe it was

one of the trips, which was an historic trip for my district, because

I believe Gary Wade was with us as well from Washington Headquarters, and as we were going down the Amazon Basin toward a

major junction, there is a little town—I am from Indiana—there is

a little town there called Indiana. And Gary said to me, do you

know the difference between—he said isn’t this Indiana a lot different than yours. I said yes, there are DEA agents and there are

none in my hometown. I have been battling for 10 years to get

some. He said done, you have a DEA office. And because we now

have a DEA office, we have been able to, rather than just do local

enforcement, to be able to take some of those to the Federal level.

And when we were at Laredo the other day, as well as this crossing, what we are increasingly finding is the ability to just not nab

guys at the local level, but they wound up with a major ring that

was coming up through Mexico, through Laredo, through Texas, up

into Fort Wayne and then launching toward Detroit, Chicago from

there.

So we see this interconnectedness and it is good to see Sandy

again here in Texas. So I look forward to your testimony.

Mr. GONZALEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, good morning. Vice

Chairman Deal, Representative Reyes, I am pleased to appear before you today to discuss the role of the DEA regarding the impact

of the drug trade along the west Texas and New Mexico area of the

southwest border. I want to thank the subcommittee for your support of the DEA.

Today, I will describe the trafficking challenges faced by DEA in

the west Texas and New Mexico region.

The El Paso Division’s area of responsibility covers approximately 40 percent of the U.S./Mexico border. El Paso and its sister

city, Ciudad Juarez, comprise the largest metropolitan area on the

border between the United States and Mexico, with nearly or perhaps over 2 million inhabitants. Daily, over 100 people cross the

port of entry into El Paso.

Cocaine smuggling remains our most serious threat, with prices

ranging from $15,000 to $16,500 per kilogram. Marijuana runs between $400 and $500 per kilogram and is the most frequently and

largest volume drug seized and transported through this area.

Uninhabited land in New Mexico provides excellent locations for

marijuana plantations and mountains and rural areas in northern

New Mexico offer opportunities for small methamphetamine laboratories. Heroin use has been very high in Santa Fe and Rio Arriba

County in north central New Mexico.

The border is continually under attack by Mexican drug trafficking organizations that operate both in Mexico and the United

States. Three major Mexican drug organizations are responsible for

smuggling the majority of the illegal drugs across the west Texas

and New Mexico portion of the southwest border. These groups utilize the El Paso ports of entry as their primary conduit into the

United States.

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Before the World Trade Center disaster in September 2001, an

estimated 90 percent of the illegal drugs coming to the United

States were smuggled through the international ports of entry.

Since that time, tighter security measures have caused smugglers

to use less conspicuous points of entry.

DEA investigations indicate that illegal drugs being transshipped

from Mexico through this area are usually destined for Kansas

City, Chicago, Atlanta and/or New York. Traffickers use concealed

compartments in tractor trailers, trucks, vans and cars. They also

use commercial trains, aircraft, Federal Express and Airborne courier services to smuggle drugs into and through our region.

In more remote areas such as the Big Bend National Park, drugs

are moved across the Rio Grande in small boats, vehicles that can

drive across the river when it is low, or even by horseback. The

Mexican Government is building a four-lane La Entrada al Pacifico

highway, which I brought a map of that area and it is right over

there to my right. This highway will intersect three major eastwest interstates. The completed route will save up to 4 shipping

days for goods moving through the Pacific Rim countries and

Texas.

Use of the passenger rail system to move contraband is also significant. Many substantial seizures have been made from passenger trains in the last year. In one instance, Federal authorities

seized half a million dollars in cash from a passenger on a west

bound train in New Mexico. The South Orient Railroad will provide

daily passenger and freight service between Mexico and the United

States. We expect both the La Entrada al Pacifico highway and this

rail transport to increase drug smuggling in the Big Bend, Marfa

area and this will present a challenge to DEA in this region.

The El Paso Division currently participates in both the west

Texas and New Mexico regions of the southwest border High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area [HIDTA]. DEA is required to respond to

Border Patrol checkpoint seizures and arrests. These referrals include both drugs seized in vehicle checkpoint inspections and abandoned drugs. In fiscal year 2002, abandoned drug cases and checkpoint seizures consumed 59 percent of our agents’ time.

Bulk currency smuggling into Mexico continues to be favored by

drug trafficking organizations. Southbound bulk currency shipments range from a few thousand dollars to millions. Larger shipments are usually concealed in tractor-trailers. Use of legitimate financial institutions also continues, including cross border wire

transfers. In order to address this threat, the El Paso Division

leads to multi-agency HIDTA enterprise money laundering initiative which was established at DEA’s request late last year and is

staffed by several agencies.

The southwest border is the most prominent gateway for illegal

drugs entering the United States. Increased border crossings combined with the presence of hardened Mexican drug trafficking organizations will require DEA’s continued vigilance and ongoing cooperation among all the law enforcement entities in this region. We

are focused on this challenge.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you and

I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

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Mr. SOUDER. Our last witness on the first panel is Mr. David

Longoria, Interim Port Director of the El Paso Port of Entry. Look

forward to hearing your testimony and the challenges that you

face.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gonzalez follows:]

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Mr. LONGORIA. Good morning, Chairman Souder and committee,

welcome to El Paso. I appreciate this opportunity to testify before

you today.

My name is David Longoria, I am currently the Interim Port Director for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection here in El

Paso, TX. My responsibility entails providing leadership for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection inspectors at the port of

entry.

As you know, on March 1, 2003, the Customs Service, Immigration Service and APHIS, the USDA component, merged into the

Department of Homeland Security. We now have one common mission that will serve to enhance the security of our borders.

Our inspectors are the guardians of our Nation’s borders—America’s frontline. They serve and protect the American public with integrity, innovation and pride. Together, they ensure that everything that enters the country, as well as everything that leaves the

country is in compliance with all U.S. laws and regulations. Our

collective priority is to prevent terrorists and terrorist weapons

from entering the United States, while facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and travel.

Thwarting terrorism, drug smuggling and any form of criminality

at our borders, while facilitating the flow of legitimate trade and

travel, is a challenge that is successfully met by utilizing industry

partnership programs, cutting edge technology and a motivated

work force.

El Paso and its sister city of Ciudad Juarez comprise one of the

world’s largest border-plex communities. Ciudad Juarez is also

home to several major drug organizations. The result is a high

level of enforcement activity at our port of entry. To lend some perspective, consider the following as it pertains to the Port of El

Paso. El Paso consistently leads the Nation in drug seizures. Since

fiscal year 2003, we have seized more than 100,000 pounds of narcotics. We consistently account for about 25 percent of all drugs

seized at the ports of entry. In fiscal year 2002, we processed about

36 million people, which is roughly the same as all of our international airports combined. El Paso leads the Nation in processing

immigrant visas. On a given day, we process about 3,000 trucks,

37,000 privately owned vehicles and about 25,000 pedestrians.

Our agency readily acknowledges that a balance between enforcement and facilitation is essential. While an overly facilitative

approach renders our Nation vulnerable, an excessively enforcement posture can negatively impact our business and the economy.

The solution lies in adopting a ’’smart border‘‘ approach which

takes advantage of risk-based enforcement efforts, non-intrusive inspection technology and engaging the industry in partnership programs.

NII technology allows inspectors to examine vehicles and passengers in a quick and non-intrusive manner. For example, a truck

coming from Mexico can be examined with gamma ray technology

in about 7 minutes. Without this technology, the truck would need

to be referred to the docks for a partial or full unloading, which can

take several hours. A corollary benefit to this technology is that it

keeps inspectors unencumbered and thereby more responsive to

other threats.

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Examples of technology are: VACIS machine—Vehicle and Cargo

Inspection System—uses gamma ray technology to scan trucks, vehicles and rail cars for density anomalies. Takes about 7 minutes

per vehicle.

X-Ray—same as VACIS but with different energy source and

takes about 10 minutes.

Density Busters—hand-held devices provide density readings.

These $5,000 instruments allow inspectors to examine vehicles and

containers for contraband, drugs or weapons of mass destruction by

detecting secret compartments.

Radiation Detectors—as the name suggests, these instruments

detect radiation emissions. Inspectors wear these on their gun

belts.

Range Finders enable inspectors to detect false walls in commercial container.

And CAOS, the Customs Automated Operations System, a system of computers, sensors, cameras and software, enables remote

monitoring of non–24X7 ports, as well as generating lane scrambles

for integrity purposes and special operations. For example, the system can be programmed to instruct officers to refer all pick-up

trucks, or all vehicles ending in No. 3, etc.

These are only some of the examples of tools and technology that

are being used to lessen the intrusiveness of the inspection process

and facilitate the flow of traffic. Industry Partnership Programs are

also being used for the same purpose, but place the onus of securing the supply chain on the industry. Signatory participants agree

to enhance the security of their operations and work with other

members to secure the entire supply chain. The supply chain can

include manufacturers, importers, carriers and warehouses.

Participants in Industry Partnership Programs are provided with

facilitated processing, including use of express lanes. Non-participants are subjected to more frequent examinations, including intrusive examinations. As a result of these initiatives, the Bureau of

Customs and Border Protection focuses its attention and resources

on non-participants, which has rendered a phenomenal success, including a recent 12,000 pound seizure of marijuana in a commercial conveyance.

One recent success with industry partnership in El Paso is the

implementation of the Secure Trade Expedited Processing program

[STEP]. This program provides express lanes and expedited processing for participants who meet certain criteria.

As technology evolves, additional standards may be required

such as use of transponders, cameras and satellite tracking. Our

goal is to have the industry able to track and use its conveyances

and containers at all times and thereby enable us to provide maximum facilitation while further focusing our enforcement efforts on

non-participants. The strategy will no doubt result in maximizing

drug interdiction.

This is just a thumbnail sketch of the many tools and programs

that are used by the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection to

secure our border.

I notice that my time is out and I just have a couple of other——

Mr. SOUDER. Just go ahead.

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Mr. LONGORIA. OK. It is also very important to mention our cooperation and daily interaction with the newly formed Bureau of

Immigration and Customs Enforcement [BICE], which is home to

Department of Homeland Security investigators. BICE Special

Agents in the El Paso District are actively involved in enforcement

operations in an area that spans the 600-mile U.S./Mexican border

from the Big Bend area of west Texas, across New Mexico to the

Arizona border.

There are approximately 200 BICE Special Agents actively involved in a variety of initiatives designed to reinforce and secure

our vast, rugged and remote border areas against the threat of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and importation of narcotics

and other contraband.

These Special Agents apprehended, arrested and successfully

prosecuted more than 2,100 Federal cases in the El Paso District

during the last 12 months and the pace has not slowed. BICE Special Agents average 15 to 20 arrests, seizures and other enforcement actions each day. In excess of 75 percent of these Federal

prosecutions are directly related to drug smuggling and associated

money laundering activities. Our BICE agents are also aggressively

pursuing national security and counter-terrorism initiatives on a

daily basis in this district. For example, BICE Special Agents are

now finalizing the prosecution of an organization that operated illegal weapons and military tactics training facility along the New

Mexico border. This investigation has, to date, resulted in the arrest of nine defendants and the seizure of over $3 million in assets.

BICE Special Agents have also significantly contributed to the location and/or apprehension of approximately 40 special interest illegal aliens since the initiation of the war in Iraq. El Paso District

agents currently have over 25 active investigations of international/

cross-border money laundering operations involving narcotics trafficking proceeds and in certain instances transfers of funds related

to suspected international sponsorship of terrorism.

In closing, I would like to again thank you for the opportunity

to appear before the subcommittee. We are very proud of the work

we do to serve and protect the American public. I can state unequivocally that the border is safer because of the tools, technology

and partnership programs that are in place, and that border security will continue to improve as a result of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Longoria follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. I’m going to limit each Member to asking questions of no more than 1 hour of each witness. [Laughter.]

There are so many ways we can go. One of the frustrating problems we have in a hearing like this is how to work within the 5-

minute rule. I am sure each of you felt the same way trying to do

your testimony. What this in effect will become is a book on this

region once this hearing is published. So we will probably have

more written questions to you than we get verbal questions in in

our questioning period, and ask for additional documentation on a

number of points that are raised.

I would like to—and we will probably do several rounds here

with the first panel. I would like to start to try to get a little bit

of a grip on the big picture. A few things were raised to me that

I was not familiar with and would like to start with Mr. Gonzalez.

On this new highway that is coming in, is the port in Mexico

fully developed yet, or is that more conceptual? In other words, is

this—logically if this port grows, it is going to be a major trafficking pattern.

Mr. GONZALEZ. Correct. Before I get into that, I was just informed that I misspoke. I said 100 people come across the border

every day, I think it is 100,000.

Mr. SOUDER. But in this port, is that something that is developing rapidly, fairly developed?

Mr. GONZALEZ. Yes, we expect the highway to be completed this

calendar year.

Mr. SOUDER. And what about the actual harbor facilities, do you

know about that?

Mr. GONZALEZ. I believe—I do not know for sure, but I believe

the harbor facilities are established.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you expect, given your experience in the Indian

region and given the fact that most are coming now through southern, southwest Colombia and coming up the west side—or the east

side of the Pacific, the west side of Mexico, that they will try to

move toward that, to get to this highway?

Mr. GONZALEZ. Yes, the information we have is that the Mexican

authorities will divert a percentage of the trucking that goes right

now through California and El Paso, to this highway and they will

enter through Presidio, TX, and this will increase the activity there

of course of the Border Patrol and Customs. And we expect to see

a lot more seizures.

Mr. SOUDER. Is the marijuana that you are seeing mostly Mexican or do you have Colombia?

Mr. GONZALEZ. I would say it is mostly Mexican.

Mr. SOUDER. Is the cocaine mostly Colombian?

Mr. GONZALEZ. Yes, we believe all the cocaine that comes across

originates in Colombia.

Mr. SOUDER. Same with heroin?

Mr. GONZALEZ. No, we see very little Colombian heroin here, it

is mostly Mexican heroin.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you think there will be an increase in Asian heroin if that port becomes——

Mr. GONZALEZ. That is certainly a good possibility, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. The only place that is dominant right now is up in

Seattle, Vancouver, San Francisco, but that——

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Mr. GONZALEZ. That could change, because that port, as I said,

cuts out several days of travel and it is just logical what is going

to happen here.

Mr. SOUDER. We will probably have some written questions both

to Customs in Washington, to Border Patrol on what is planned at

the Presidio crossing and what is happening with that port down

there and how we are planning to shift, because it also will affect

what is coming from farther south.

In the—continuing with Mr. Gonzalez, in Laredo, in Nuevo Laredo, they are clearly having major shootouts as organizations are

changing and it has spilled across the border down toward McAllen

as they reach across the border to assassinate people, the different

trafficking organizations. Could you, on that map, kind of give an

idea of what major Mexican cartel are controlling the El Paso Sector? Does that go down further on the border here, do they tend

to recognize where the New Mexico border is?

Mr. GONZALEZ. No, we believe that the major organizations that

are operating in this area also extend both into New Mexico and

east into Texas.

Mr. SOUDER. Has the fight that is happening down in Laredo

spilled over to Juarez?

Mr. GONZALEZ. The violence you mean?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Mr. GONZALEZ. Juarez is one of the most violent cities that I

have ever heard about or seen, but that violence does not spill over

into El Paso, it sort of stays on that side, unlike what you just said,

that it is spilling over into our side in Laredo. That is not happening here.

Mr. SOUDER. What is the town where there were six Americans

killed? Falcon Lake, in the Zapata area, in the last few weeks. Because Cario, his group is fighting for control and I just wondered

if that was—what is hard to figure out is are we matched up on

the U.S. side like the cartels are matched up on their side, or when

we have our sectors cross over, are we not matched where their

cartels are, because we have—are we doing a pass-off? And that is

what I was trying to figure out, how they were lined up down here

as we were working the border on this side.

I am going to yield to Mr. Deal at this point. Actually, let me

yield to Mr. Reyes.

Mr. REYES. When you talk about matching up resources against

the cartels, probably Border Patrol would be the one that would be

in a position to comment. Do you want to comment for the chairman on the question he was asking Mr. Gonzalez?

Mr. BEESON. Basically we do deploy our resources in a manner

that is consistent with what is going on in the area, so if we have

information about activity in a particular area, then we will concentrate resources there, either through staffing, cameras, things of

that nature, other pieces of technology that we use, sensors, things

like that, to combat the threat of narcotics being brought into the

country.

Mr. REYES. And they also have an extensive use of informants

through anti-smuggling. They do not just limit anti-smuggling to

people smuggling, they run the gamut—arms smuggling, certainly

narcotics and also on the lookout for terrorists.

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One thing that I would like to point out for the record, Mr.

Chairman, is that there are pockets along our border on the Mexican side of Middle Eastern, primarily business people. I know

Juarez has a substantial community and when you talk about our

region here, it is good to know that—good information to have and

to know that when you are talking about kind of the metro-plex

area, you are talking about an area of about 3 million people, when

you take into account El Paso, Las Cruces and Juarez, a city of—

the official population released by the Mexican Government is

about 1.4, 1.5 million but most people will tell you it is a lot closer

to 2 million. And the region itself is about 3 million inhabitants,

which puts a lot of pressure, since we are doing this enforcement

part of it, on the law enforcement agencies that have that kind of

responsibility and that routinely work fairly closely. You know,

there are some limitations, and I know when you get your briefing

at EPIC, they will be able to give you some of the information that

these gentlemen cannot give you in open testimony, but they will

give you the classified briefing on the narcotics organizations, they

will actually show you a schematic on how they operate and obviously they cannot do it in open forum, for security reasons. So you

will find it very interesting.

I have a couple of areas that I want to focus on in my time. For

Mr. Beeson, a critical component of being able to manage the border, even with Operation Hold the Line in place, is staffing and

also how you supplement the staffing and the capability to monitor

the border with technology. Can you, for the committee, elaborate

on—I know we have had a shortfall in the amount of staffing that

even I requested when I was Chief here, in order to maintain the

integrity of Operation Hold the Line, and it would be important to

get those kinds of figures to the committee. If you do not have

them with you today, certainly get them on the record.

But can you comment on those things—staffing and technology?

Mr. BEESON. There are 1,100 Border Patrol agents here within

the El Paso Sector, that is for 289 miles of border and I think

125,000 square miles or 225.

It is important to control the border, for there to be an adequate

mix of staffing both for the technology and for the agents. You need

the mix with the cameras, with sensors and things like that. Those

are all things that enhance what the agents are able to do when

they are out patrolling the border. It is an extra set of eyes or an

extra set of ears for the agents as they do the work that they are

doing out there.

It is important to continue to increase staffing. In a number of

locations, we are receiving more cameras this year, which we will

be deploying in strategic locations. So they are all important pieces

to gaining control of the border, is to get that staffing mix, that

technology mix, to help control the area.

Mr. REYES. Will you be able to provide staffing figures to the

committee—the number of agents that the El Paso Sector—and it

would be valuable for you to ask every one of the nine chiefs that

have responsibility along the U.S./Mexico border to give you their

staffing plans; not what they have currently on board, but what

they feel would be the optimum level of staffing to provide border

management. Because one of the misconceptions when we talk

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about border control, you cannot seal off the border, but you get

into a lot of diminishing returns.

I think my colleagues and I many years ago, over 10 years ago,

came up with a model that if we managed the border with an 85

percent control factor, that is about the optimum that we could

hope for. That includes not only staffing but also the technology

that Assistant Chief Beeson talks about.

And it would also be helpful for you to give the committee the

information on the kinds of cameras, particularly the ones that are

mounted in remote areas on poles, the kinds of ground sensors that

you have, you have infrared, you have magnetic, you have seismic.

All of those are important components because in Congress when

we fund these programs, especially now under Homeland Security,

we need to understand the expertise that the law enforcement

agencies have, in particular Border Patrol, to be able to fund the

kinds of sensors that they need, and camera systems.

Are we going to have another round?

Mr. SOUDER. Yes.

Mr. REYES. OK, so I will stop right there. I do have some questions for a couple of the other panelists.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Deal.

Mr. DEAL. One of the most alarming reports that I think any of

us have received have been some media reports of military on the

Mexican side and police on the Mexican side being engaged in drug

smuggling and in an instance or so even firing on the U.S. officials.

Could you comment on the degree of that involvement that you

have detected and conversely, the degree of cooperation that you

are receiving from the Mexican law enforcement authorities to deal

with this drug problem—any of you.

Mr. BEESON. I will go. In the El Paso area itself, which of course

are the two west counties of Texas and New Mexico, we have had

in the past incursions of Mexican military, no evidence that they

were involved in narcotics smuggling. The big one that we had, it

appeared to be a case that they got lost. We do not have concrete

information regarding narcotics smuggling and other government

officials.

What we do have in this sector is—and I mentioned this in my

statement—was the Mexican liaison unit. And what that unit does

for us is it coordinates and communicates on a daily basis with officials in Mexico—the police, the military, other government officials,

consular officials, things like that. The purpose for that is to improve safety on the border, to try and make sure that incidents like

the one that happened in Santa Teresa a number of years ago do

not occur again, to increase safety for the officers both on the Mexican side and on our side that are patrolling that border, and for

the people that are crossing that border, because there are a number of issues with bandits and things of that nature.

We do work very closely with them and then, of course, there are

some things that we will not share, in terms of information and

things like that. But we have a pretty good relationship with them

here in this area and we enjoy a good level of cooperation.

Mr. GONZALEZ. Mr. Vice Chairman, I just want to make a couple

of comments on the cooperation issue. Just last week, I met with

the head of the Mexican Federal Agency of Investigations, which is

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like the FBI. They also handle drug enforcement. And we are, at

the present time, exchanging information and working together on

major investigations, which I will be glad to address later with you

or with your staff.

Mr. DEAL. One of the most recent developments that we understand has occurred is that the Supreme Court of Mexico has now

determined that they will not extradite if the individual faces the

potential of a life imprisonment, even though it may be subject to

pardon or parole. That obviously holds the potential of interfering

with breaking up major drug cartels, those involved in large scale

drug trafficking. That appears to me to be quite a contrast with

what we have in Colombia, where they have very much cooperated

with the extradition of the high-level individuals back to our country for prosecution.

Could any of you comment about whether that change in the

rules relating to extradition has presented problems up to this

point and do you anticipate that it would present problems in the

future?

Mr. GONZALEZ. The extradition issue, we had some discussions

on that yesterday. The Mexican Government, as you said, they will

not extradite someone who is facing a life term or a death sentence.

That is their law. But we can work with them if we are willing to,

for example, charge a different crime or a lesser crime that does

not have the death penalty or life imprisonment as punishment.

They indicated that they will—something along the lines of 30

years, 40 years, something like that, they do not have a problem

with it, but I believe that we just—for the time being, we are going

to have to live with that, with no extradition if there is a death

sentence or life imprisonment.

Mr. DEAL. That has already presented problems in my State with

regard to gang activity in which drive-by shootings or other similar

crimes have been committed and the individual is successful in

fleeing back across the border. That, to me, long-term, poses some

very, very significant problems and one that our prosecutors are already raising concerns about at the State level, that they are faced

with these problems. And in effect, even if they have a case that

is extraditable, the procedure that Mexico requires virtually requires a trial in Mexico as a prerequisite to being able to obtain

extradition. That is a very non-cooperative attitude, if there is any

desire, in my opinion, in the part of Mexico to cooperate in this

problem.

Second round, I may explore that attitude a little further. Thank

you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

I want to come back, before moving on to a different angle, to two

different things, because I think it is important to distinguish, for

the record. We are not asking about ongoing investigations, we are

asking in general terms and I think, Mr. Beeson, given the fact

that the question went on the record, we have to have a direct answer under oath.

Are you saying that you do not believe that—because the impression was that things are going just fine with the Mexican military

and police. I do not think the facts speak to that, there is a tremendous corruption problem and are you saying there is no corruption

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on the other side and that they have been cooperating, or are you

saying that we have cooperation problems and there is corruption

on the other side?

Mr. BEESON. I am not saying that there are no corruption problems on the other side, there are. They cooperate with us on some

issues, things that we can work together on, and normally around

safety and things like that.

We do not—well, I do not have any information today regarding

Mexican military or Mexican law enforcement involvement in narcotic smuggling, that would be something I would have to research.

Mr. SOUDER. What about protection?

Mr. BEESON. Or protection. That is something that I would have

to research and provide to the committee later.

Mr. SOUDER. Have you seen them interdict or help you in interdiction when you spot people coming across?

Mr. BEESON. We have. I can speak to a couple of occasions that

I have personal knowledge of. In Deming, NM, a vehicle crossed

the border on our side laden with narcotics, the agents engaged in

an attempt to stop that vehicle, it ran south into Mexico. Our officers contacted the Mexican military and they did go and apprehend

that vehicle and I want to say it was around 600 pounds of narcotics out of the house in Palomas. So they did take action there.

We have another case, and I want to say it was in Fabens, another deal where the narcotics made it south and we contacted the

Mexican police and they did go and apprehend them.

Mr. SOUDER. So is it your testimony that it has improved on the

Mexican side, the same, worse? I am not asking specifics, I am asking in general terms.

Here is the problem we have in the U.S. Congress and with the

American people, is there is intelligence that—on ongoing investigations that you do not want to do, there are obviously diplomatic

relations between the two countries, but you cannot go to the U.S.

Congress, which is dependent on democratic elections, ask us for

additional money for agents, ask us for additional money to work

the border and then say oh, we are not going to tell the people why

you need this money. Because one of the things we are having in

the narcotics area and in the border patrol area is increasing unwillingness of people who do not live along the border to pay for

additional costs along the border, if the border people say things

are going fine because there is political pressure on the trade question that you do not want to deal with.

It is much like when we deal with inner city crime in the United

States, you cannot say oh, we do not want to have an image that

we have a bad problem, but we want the other taxpayers to help

address the problem, but we do not want to acknowledge the problem is there. We either have a problem or we do not have a problem and that is one of the challenges we have in dealing in the

public arena.

I just read a book, which I do not believe is particularly accurate,

I have dealt with this stuff, Along the Border, or whatever it is

called, by Mark Bowden, and he makes some very serious charges

about the agencies in the Federal Government and it is important

that when we have the opportunities to make those responses, to

say yes, we understand, we are trying to deal with those, some of

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these things are exaggerated and the general public’s impression of

corruption is over-exaggerated, but we understand there is a problem. The charges are pretty much around the table around the

country and in Washington that there has been a playing down by

the different agencies and that you all have been somewhat shackled because of concern that it would affect different trade debates.

I represent an area where I have some concerns about trucking

and trade things, but basically we are in an inevitable path in the

North American continent to trying to work with Mexico and Canada, but to do that, we have to figure out what we are actually

dealing with, so when we—I am going to be at the U.S./Mexico Parliamentary sessions in just a few weeks, I have to know, you know,

is it doing better, doing worse, where are our specific problems.

And if it is doing better, that is great and we need to get that message out. But that is what I am trying to get a handle on here because in the last few days we have seen many Mexican military

units on the other side for explanations we do not fully understand.

And we will get that to some degree in private briefings, but I

think it is also important that the general public understand that

there are some unusual things going along the Mexican border that

are visual to the open eye that do not meet standard tests of logic.

And if you are not seeing that in this sector, then we need to figure

out how to address that question in the other part of Texas sector.

Because what I could see with my eyes made no sense. The question is is that happening up in this area too or is this area different

from what I saw in the other part of Texas?

I mean I saw guys with all kinds of arms who were not particularly happy to see Border Patrol agents.

Mr. BEESON. We do see people, military, down on the border on

the Mexican side.

Mr. SOUDER. And by the way, the other thing we are hearing

constantly, farmers and ranchers and people in villages tell us that

they see the Mexican police and/or military or people who have stolen uniforms which is another possibility, coming across providing

some protection. Are you all aware of that and is it happening in

this sector?

Mr. BEESON. We do receive reports on occasion of instances

where folks have come across with narcotics loads using tactics

that would appear to be military, wearing uniforms that would appear to be military. We have not apprehended anybody doing that

but we have received information of that sort.

Mr. SOUDER. So basically—because in our Arizona hearing, quite

frankly, we had a lot of undocumented allegations and at this

point, it would be your testimony that while there is enough undocumented allegations to make us concerned, the fact is we have

not directly proven those type of allegations and the general public

should know that we are committed to trying—is it fair to say you

are committed to trying to establish that because it would be important information for our government to know. Let me assure

you, if we learn there is any political pressure to disguise that type

of incursion occurring, there will not be a pleasant reaction out of

the U.S. Congress, there will be an explosion out of the U.S. Congress. At the same time, we have to be very careful and the general

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ing in unsubstantiated information from people who may in fact

just like—and this is easier for the American public to understand

right now—is that in Iraq, clearly a number of uniforms were stolen by forces with Saddam to try to make it appear like U.S. soldiers were doing certain things. And that can happen in other

places too and that what we need to deal with are facts and that

is one of the things we are trying to get to here.

We will followup and we can hear the confidential cases, but I

am trying to get a general on-the-record reaction of—would you say

it is better or worse in the region as far as how it has been developed?

Mr. BEESON. I would say overall the relationship is better.

Mr. GONZALEZ. Obviously I cannot comment about those issues

on the border, but as it pertains to the investigative side, I served

in Mexico in the late 1980’s and I have a relationship with Mexican

authorities now. And I can tell you that at the Federal level, the

level of cooperation has increased dramatically, it is basically unprecedented. And like I said, I have met, I think three times already, with the head of the Mexican FBI and we are working, exchanging information. I believe time will tell, but I think things are

looking up in that area now.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, that is really important for us to know, because some Members have an unrealistic expectation of how fast

Mexico can change. In a low income culture where you could be,

like in Colombia, there is also false expectations where you can be

murdered one way or the other—if you help them you get in trouble and if you do not help them you get assassinated, your income

level—we have huge problems on our side of the border even all

the way up to Indiana, people are offered huge amounts of money

to leave their farm for a day so a load can be exchanged. We are

not above these kinds of problems in our country as well, and what

I want to know is are we getting incremental progress and are you

seeing it in this sector.

So I thank you for your comments and your patience with that.

I did not get to my regular round of questioning but I will now

yield to—I wanted to followup on the National Park Service question, so I will do it next time. Mr. Reyes.

Mr. REYES. You know, in every hearing that I have participated

in, the chairman is the man, so you can take as much time as you

want. This is critical information that you are looking for. So I

would be glad to cede you my time if that is what you want.

Mr. SOUDER. Why don’t you go ahead. When I do my last round,

if I want to go more, then I will.

Mr. REYES. Well, let me just give you some personal testimony

because the issue of corruption, as my colleague Congressman Deal

was bringing up, is not limited to Mexican corruption. In fact, during the time that I served as Chief in McAllen in south Texas from

1984 to 1993 when they moved me here, of the three sheriffs that

we dealt with in Cameron County, Hidalgo County and Starr County, all of them have subsequently been prosecuted and are doing

time for corruption, on the U.S. side.

We always prioritized working and making sure that we had a

good working relationship, understanding, as Assistant Chief

Beeson said, understanding the limitations of that relationship

54

with our Mexican counterparts. But you absolutely have to have

that relationship if you are going to be successful in any way in

doing the kinds of things that you are doing, patrolling the border.

But corruption is on both sides. The sheriff of, I believe it was

either Presidio County or the adjoining county, was also arrested,

and he was smuggling a load of—maybe it was a ton, 2,300 pounds

or something like that, of cocaine through a Border Patrol checkpoint. The Border Patrol busted him and he is doing time in Fort

Worth today, and that was a sheriff on our side. Just for the sake

of information, that sheriff was an Anglo sheriff, the three sheriffs

in south Texas were all Hispanic sheriffs.

Mr. SOUDER. Are these deputy sheriffs or——

Mr. GONZALEZ. No, these were full sheriffs, the main guy, like

you are going to be hearing testimony from Sheriff Leo Samaniego,

who has got the responsibility for El Paso County.

So corruption and the tentacles of corruption reach all across the

border. We have had, unfortunately, Border Patrol agents, DEA

agents, FBI agents, that have—Customs, Immigration inspectors—

that have been investigated and prosecuted for corruption, because

there is so much money out there. So we want to make sure that

we understand that corruption tentacles cover both sides of the

border.

Now let me just address a couple of the other issues, which is

the Mexican military and the U.S. military. The Mexican military

is deployed on the Mexican side of the border because of the concerns that we have had since September 11. So President Fox made

an agreement with President Bush that they would deploy an increased number of military units to the U.S./Mexico border to try

to help with that control and that kind of concern that we have.

I am glad that you are going to Inter-Parliamentary because I

have been going since I have been in Congress and we have gone

the gamut of issues and of good and bad relationships with Mexico,

as it pertains to border enforcement.

I know that people think that it is a quick fix and it is an easy

fix to militarize the border, but nothing could be further from the

truth. We need to support professional, trained, bilingual people

that understand and know the culture of the border rather than

bringing in the 82nd or the 173rd or the 3rd Infantry, or whoever,

for the reasons that it is not going to be cheap, it is not going to

be easy and you could be opening our military soldiers to issues of

personal liability, as happened in Redford, TX, which is by Marfa,

when a military unit that was doing some listening post, outpost,

you know, working covertly, unfortunately killed an 18-year-old

young man. And I will get you that information.

So those are all real issues that we that live on the border and

certainly with the kind of background that I have, as the only

Member of Congress that has that experience, we need to really

have other colleagues and certainly committees like the one that

you chair, have them really understand the dynamics of why it is

important that we look at the border region as a place where you

can spend a dollar and save spending $100 in some interior location like your district or a Georgia district or some other area in

the interior, because it makes sense to invest in the border because

this is where these guys that are the experts can tell you that dolVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:41 Nov 21, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\90205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lar will go much further than spending $10 or $100 in Dallas or

Denver or Duluth or some other place.

So I will be happy to continue to work with you and, you know,

at least bring my expertise. You know, there is good news and bad

news in this. The good news is I am the only Member of Congress

with this background and the other part of the good news is that

I get consulted. The bad news is that sometimes you guys do not

follow my advice or my recommendations. [Laughter.]

Mr. REYES. But that is the nature of the beast. But certainly

doing these kinds of hearings—and you know, you are absolutely

right, ask the pointed questions. Now Assistant Chief Beeson is not

the chief here, so I would recommend that you call in the nine border chiefs of the Border Patrol and the nine or however many Customs and DEA and FBI have, and in the comfort of your office, just

be pointed with them and say look, we are trying to make some decisions here that affect your ability to function at America’s frontline of defense, which is our Nation’s borders, and we need to have

the straight information.

A lot of times, from personal experience, let me tell you, Mr.

Chairman, when I testified—and I testified many times before Congress as the Chief—they literally—the agency literally locks you

into the testimony that has been prepared by the agency that you

are—unless you know the questions to ask, the witnesses are

locked into what they can say and the amount of area that they

can cover. We need to change that because these guys have a lot

of information, they have a lot of expertise and we ought to be able

to tap into it so that we can make the kinds of funding decisions

that will affect our ability to function as a country under homeland

defense.

So I offer my—I am at your disposal in terms of working on these

issues.

Mr. SOUDER. In my aggressiveness with the question, and I know

Mr. Beeson had to come in at the last minute to substitute for the

Chief, and, as a Republican who supports the Republican administration, I understand the importance of having an organized presentation and not getting off into kind of what my sociology professor used to call ‘‘minanti’’ as opposed to the bigger picture. At the

same time, you know, that you are under oath in front of this committee. This is an oversight committee, it is historically the function of this Government Reform Committee to challenge and to

make sure even within our own administration what we are doing

is right, and you know what, if you are inaccurate under oath, your

supervisor, who helped guide the testimony, is not in trouble, you

are. Which is why it is important to remember in this committee,

it is a little bit different in our approach.

Mr. Deal.

Mr. DEAL. As I indicated in the beginning, what you do here has

impacts everywhere. Let me give you the significance of it. This is

my 11th year in Congress, when I was elected in 1992, the problem

of illegal immigration in my north Georgia district was the No. 1

social issue that we faced. It has not gotten better, it has gotten

far worse.

The two largest independent school districts, public school districts, in my Congressional District which stretches and borders—

56

used to border four States, now it still borders three States—the

largest population in those two school districts is Hispanic, nonEnglish speaking students. They exceed the population of native

Anglos, they exceed the population, by far, of African American students.

The impacts on my Congressional District are tremendous and,

as the chairman said, we need some honest answers. We need to

know what can we do to make sure we don’t continue along this

same road. If it is going to continue, and we are all saying we are

doing everything just fine and everything is working just right,

then my district is going to be in terrible shape, because over the

last 11 years it has not gotten better, it has gotten far worse.

Let me ask you a question with regard to enforcement. And I am

somebody who voted for NAFTA by the way. Are there any sanctions on trucks, vehicles that are in the organized transportation

industry, who are caught with illegal drugs in their transport? Now

I know the vehicle probably is seized, the driver may be arrested,

but are there any consequences to those people who are trying to

ship those goods using those methods? Those trucking firms, are

they put on any kind of a list, are they sanctioned in any fashion?

Mr. LONGORIA. Yes, we enter information on the respective importer, manufacturer or wherever the investigation leads. We enter

that into a system of records, a data base, and we use that information to target accordingly. So somebody who has a history of——

Mr. DEAL. What do you mean by target accordingly?

Mr. LONGORIA. Well, somebody who has a history or has a higher

risk of importing narcotics or violating laws or being non-compliant, would incur more inspections or closer inspections, more examinations, that kind of thing. They would also be precluded from

participating in Industry Partnership Programs, as I had pointed

out earlier. People that are highly compliant are allowed to participate in these Industry Partnership Programs and they get expedited processing. So they would be precluded from participating in

that.

Mr. REYES. Can you identify specifically the system that you use?

Because I think it is important for the members of the committee

to have that information.

Mr. LONGORIA. It is called ACS, Automated Commercial System,

it is a system of records. It is being revised and modified under the

Department of Homeland Security, it is soon to be called ACE, the

Automated Commercial Environment. And it collects data on merchandise that is imported, who imported it, who manufactured it,

what is the point of origin, what is the country of origin. As I indicated, in Industry Partnership Programs, we get people to participate in these programs and secure the supply chain to push the

border out, so to speak, create a virtual border, and secure the supply chain that way. Our part of the deal is that we will offer expedited treatment to those participants.

People who are caught violating the law would be precluded—

and you are right, we do seize the trucks. That is one of the consequences.

Mr. DEAL. Well, you know, under the trade laws, if someone is

violating trade rules, then there could be sanctions with regard to

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thing comparable. You know, they are not just shipping an extra

pair of blue jeans in here, they are shipping drugs. And if you can

be sanctioned for violating your quotas on shipping extra blue

jeans, you certainly ought to be sanctioned in some fashion—and

it is probably beyond the jurisdiction of what any of you have control over—but it would seem to me it would be one of those extra

sanctions that we ought to look at, as we are looking in trade rules

and trade negotiations. It certainly I think has some merit to it for

those who would take advantage of the system.

Let me ask a question, and I guess Mr. Beeson, this probably is

more directed at you. We have heard a variety of opinions as to

how people who are detected illegally coming into this country are

treated. Assuming they are not carrying contraband, we are told

that in Laredo, they may be given 15 chances of being caught—if

they are that unlucky, they are not very good at it—but 15 times

before any action is taken against them. In other parts along the

border, we have heard oh, they get five free shots at it before we

do anything with them.

What is the policy here, if there is a policy?

Mr. BEESON. In New Mexico, I want to say it is 10, if we have

apprehended you 10 times, then we will prosecute you, unless there

are special aggravating circumstances. If you fought with the officers or lied about something, something like that, then they may

not wait until there is 10 apprehensions.

In Texas, I believe it is 5, it is 5 to 10. Same deal, if we have

caught you that many times, we are going to prosecute you, but if

there is aggravating circumstances; you know, you had false documents or you fought with the officers, whatever the case may be,

then we may not wait for the 5 to 10 times to prosecute.

Mr. DEAL. Could I ask just one more followup on that?

Mr. SOUDER. Sure.

Mr. DEAL. Let me give you an example of how bad it is though

once they get past you. In my hometown, my son is the local district attorney there, and the outcry in my community is—well, first

of all, we cannot conduct court without a translator; second is that

even though you are detected and arrested for a misdemeanor DUI,

you can be arrested for as many as three DUIs in my hometown

and be an illegal alien, be known by the judge, know by the court

authorities on every one of those instances that you are illegally in

the country and this is your third DUI, and they will not be deported. Now, you know, that’s better than having 15 shots at the

border, you know. You have already got past there and you got into

the country and we still cannot get anybody to do anything about

it. That is the magnitude of the irritation and I am afraid, as the

chairman says, the kind of hostility that is growing in the interior

of this country, to the problems that we are facing.

And that is just an everyday experience in our hometown, because you see, we cannot run them back to the border and say go

home, you know, we have to depend on somebody else to do that.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me ask this question and if you cannot answer

it, Mr. Beeson, maybe either an INS or somebody at the Port Authority or we will get somebody at the Port Authority, do you know

how many people actually get caught 10 times? Have you had cases

like that?

58

Mr. BEESON. We have had cases like that, but I did not bring

those numbers with me today, I can get that for you. We call them

rescividists, so it would be a matter of looking up to see how may

rescividists we have had.

Mr. DEAL. They are just commuting to work if they are doing

that.

Mr. SOUDER. And I would like the record to show, obviously the

smuggling organizations know these because as a functional matter, it means that we are not, generally speaking, detaining or arresting people for just being an illegal immigrant, as a practical

matter. But that can be enforced at any given time and nobody

coming across should think oh, well, I get 10 shots at this, because

you never know on any given day whether or not that rule may

change or how it will be enforced at a given place. But it is important for us to understand, because I do not think most of the Members of Congress understand that there are variables along the border as to how it is enforced and that those numbers are there.

Now to obvious question back to Members of Congress if we say

how come you are letting them do 10 times, well, what would you

do with the people anyway, what would be the net impact, how

would the patterns change, what would happen with that? It is not

a clearcut oh, let us just stop it at one, but that would have consequences. But it is something that is deserving of public debate,

because this has been done without really congressional oversight.

I say that because this committee, up until directly switching to

Homeland Security and will now be under that subcommittee, we

had immigration oversight and it was only in the last period that

I learned that it was that specific. And it is not as though I have

not been on the border for 6 years. And so this has not been—I can

guarantee you—not been a publicly debated strategy and what alternatives and how we would deal with it. I am not even saying

we would not even wind up with the same strategy, it is just that

is part of the oversight function, is to figure out how it is working.

I want to move to some questions with Mr. Deckert on the National Park. First, I met with the National Park Service and I believe the Inspector General, because I had a person who took leave

from the Park Service, who worked with—it was a ranger at Yosemite, who came up when people were beheaded and he has been

involved in that, he is now back at Yosemite. And I learned a little

bit about the law enforcement problems inside the National Park

Service.

And it was clear from going over to Organ Pipe that contrary to

some impressions, it was not a matter of training, it was a matter

of they had multiple agents there, he was getting direction from a

helicopter, he had his vest on, it was a fluke shot that got underneath and came out underneath the vest, and the guy was clearly,

you know, behind bushes where you would not have been able to

see him. It was not a lack of training, it was a combination of a

fluke and a guy who was dedicated to killing whoever was there,

whether it was a Border Patrol person, DEA or a Park Service.

But one of the charges is that there have not been complete and

accurate statistics on crime in the parks and the other public

lands. Are you keeping drug statistics? Do you have a systematic

way to do that inside your park? Because clearly, now particularly,

59

having been identified as the second highest park at risk, you are

under kind of more scrutiny in this area. Could you explain a little

bit what you are doing, what that has done to resources inside your

park, whether you feel there is additional training needed, how we

tackle this at a park like yours.

Mr. DECKERT. Yes, I think we are keeping accurate statistics now

and I think there probably has been a problem in the past with the

service-wide system that is used. As I explained, we have had an

increase in drug trafficking this past year and we are concerned

about it. I have been in contact with Bill Wellman, who you know

from your dealings out in Arizona, the Superintendent of Organ

Pipe Cactus, and what he is telling his fellow superintendents

along the border who have not experienced what he has experienced at Organ Pipe, is the time to do something is now. He wished

he had this knowledge 3 or 4 years ago, before it really mushroomed at Organ Pipe. And we are attempting to do that through

the funding that has been reprioritized by our regional office. It is

not additional funding, but it is taken away from other needed

projects, but recognizing this is a priority now, we have had funding so that we can hire more rangers. Also recognizing that the National Park Service mission differs from the other organizations

represented here today in that we are primarily protecting resources and visitors. But when it comes to a time when drug and

illegal alien smuggling affects protecting park resources and visitors, we get more involved, to the detriment of specifically protecting park resources in other parts of the park.

We have right now 11 full time law enforcement rangers in Big

Bend National Park, 245 miles of border, including both the park

and the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, which is about 1 percent of the sector up here that has the Border Patrol protection.

And we cannot do the job without our partnerships with these

other agencies.

But funding is our main concern, both for the things we are talking about here—communication systems, dispatch operations, even

infrastructure for housing for employees. A couple more Border Patrol agents stationed in the park would be of great help to us.

Mr. SOUDER. How many Border Patrol are in the park at this

time?

Mr. DECKERT. We have two that live in the park now.

Mr. SOUDER. Two for the 245 miles?

Mr. DECKERT. Right. Well, there are others outside the park that

assist as well.

Mr. SOUDER. By assist, do you mean that they come in on a regular basis inside the park, or that they come on an on-call basis?

Mr. DECKERT. On call primarily.

Mr. SOUDER. So as far as general surveillance in the park,

there’s two Border Patrol plus your park rangers?

Mr. DECKERT. Correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Beeson, what would be a typical per–50 mile

Border Patrol? In other words, if you took a region of 200 miles and

you have how many, 60? 400? In Arizona, it is pretty intense.

Mr. BEESON. It is very intense in Arizona because that is our hot

spot right now. It is going to vary based on the station. A number

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of places—the Marfa Sector staffing-wise, they have—the last time

I can recall was around 186 for the entire sector.

Mr. SOUDER. Which is how many miles?

Mr. BEESON. I am sorry, I do not know.

Mr. REYES. In territory, Mr. Chairman, that is one of the largest

geographic areas of responsibility. That is what I mean that you

need to have that staffing model because——

Mr. SOUDER. We will get it.

Mr. REYES. Well, because it varies now. When you are talking

about an area like Big Bend Park, that is an area—certainly two

agents, I would never even begin to defend the lack of resources in

there, because I would say as a Chief, with the kind of activity that

they have, the kind of concerns on narcotics, I would have a couple

of stations in there with maybe 35 to 60 agents to be able to control

that area and that would be only if we were also able to get technology in there, the kinds of cameras that Assistant Chief Beeson

was talking about, the kind of sensors, both seismic, infrared and

magnetic, that would give you an alert. Because you get into a situation where there is so much territory that you cannot afford to

saturate that area like you would in El Paso or in a metropolitan

area like El Paso-Juarez. Here you actually need agents within

eyesight of each other as well as the technology to be able to—because you have more people.

You have the advantage of remoteness, rugged terrain and the

ability to monitor electronically in a place like Big Bend, but two

agents is ridiculous or pathetic to think that they would be able to

provide the kind of coverage that you would need for that area. You

would need, I would say easily 30 to 60 agents.

Mr. SOUDER. Because we do need and want—as we do our regional field hearings, we will pull back to the Washington level and

then do an oversight in Washington looking at the broader, but

clearly what we are looking for, where are there holes.

We are dealing with multiple questions—illegal immigration,

narcotics, potential terrorism, and then all the other types of illegal

trafficking that goes through. Guns and money tend to be moving

in the other direction. In that, one of our challenges is to try to

stay a step ahead. I want to followup with a couple more things

on the park side.

As you said, the mission of the National Park Service is not to

provide border security. The mission of the Park Service is to protect the resources. Unfortunately, as we learned in Organ Pipe, it

is very difficult to protect the natural resource if it becomes a huge

illegal immigrant and/or drug trafficking area. They have some of

their trails set down. At this point has there been any—to what degree has the illegal immigration or drugs that are moving through

Big Bend affected any camping area, utilization of trails, resource

degradation? In Organ Pipe, even cutting of cactuses has been a

problem. Anything at this point, or are you still at the front end

of the curve?

Mr. DECKERT. We are pretty much at the front end of the curve.

We have not seen that much resource degradation from this kind

of activity, but then again, we have a huge area, even compared

with Organ Pipe, and we do not even have enough people to do the

inventorying and monitoring of resources to see what kind of acVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:41 Nov 21, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\90205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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tions may have been taken out there and what kind of degradation

may have occurred.

We would like to have funding for that too, so that we can see

and show if this comes that there is a problem. And we also again

want to be proactive by doing irregular patrols and doing the sorts

of things, law enforcement actions, and protection actions that

would hopefully keep that from beginning there, as it did at Organ

Pipe. Once the flow is opened, it seemed to continue on, and we

would like to stop it in the beginning.

Mr. SOUDER. If your rangers are diverted to this, what will they

not be doing that they were doing before?

Mr. DECKERT. Oh, a variety of things in the rest of the park, regular road patrols, back country patrols, you know, protecting the

resources from just inadvertent or activities that visitors might

harm the resources, and protecting them from each other and from

getting hurt out there in the park, search and rescue operations.

We provide just about everything there in the park from structural

fire control to search and rescue, besides law enforcement. So those

are all duties of the law enforcement folks in the park. It is a wide

range of multi-specialist type duties.

Mr. SOUDER. I thank the Park Service today for sending the representative of agencies and other parks, it was particularly helpful

to get the Amistad quotes on the amount of narcotics in the record,

and we will ask for an additional written statement on that. At

some point, hopefully, at the very southeast portion of Texas, we

will pick up Padre Island when we look at the Brownsville Sector

and that Corpus Christi Sector of the border. But it also suggests

that as we work to protect some of our Federal land agencies, then

it pushes it in other places but I wanted to make sure I picked that

up.

In this amount of marijuana seized, do you believe that some of

this is that you were not keeping as much data in 2000, prior to

2000, or—in other words, it is a function of how much you have actually seized but are we looking for it more now or has it actually

increased? I mean, you are growing exponentially, 1,300 in 2000,

10,000 in 2002, 3,700, is that in 3 months?

Mr. DECKERT. I am not sure, which park are you referring to?

Mr. SOUDER. In Big Bend—oh, that is Amistad, excuse me, sorry

about that. Could I have the person from Amistad come up? I want

to ask him a question on that. I need to swear you in, if you will

come up and raise your right hand.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Will you give your name for the record and spell it,

because we did not have it.

Mr. MALLOY. Bruce Malloy, M-a-l-l-o-y, Chief Ranger at Amistad

National Recreation Area in Del Rio, TX.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Deckert, in his—I think this was in your written testimony, I do not think you said this in your verbal—said

1,300 marijuana pounds seized at Amistad in 2000, 10,000 in 2002,

3,700 so far this year. Now is that through March?

Mr. MALLOY. Yes, sir, it is.

Mr. SOUDER. So if you took that times four, we would be looking

at close to 16,000 this year, if it kept that pace.

Mr. MALLOY. That is correct.

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Mr. SOUDER. Is that because there is a more active presence

right now or is this a new trafficking route that has opened?

Mr. MALLOY. Well, you know, I cannot be sure exactly what it

is attributable to, but the rangers there feel that there is significant more activity in Amistad over the last couple of years than

they have seen in previous years. And Amistad is working very cooperatively with the other agencies, so it is not just our rangers

that are dealing with this activity. And a lot of those seizures are

done cooperatively, particularly with the Border Patrol and U.S.

Customs.

Mr. SOUDER. Well, thank you, that is the type of thing we are

looking for. Also where are the changes and what are the patterns

because these are new things for us to think of at the Federal level,

both on the Parks Committee and here, of man, they are going to

move right through, but you can see the trails and you can see,

particularly over at Organ Pipe but also up in Olympic or other

places where you try to protect nesting areas and so on. You put

them off limits to our agents and the next thing you know, all the

illegals and all the drug trafficking is going right through the nesting areas and the whole purpose to protect them, they are now

trampled to death.

The other question that I wanted to relate to Mr. Deckert, is I

thought it was interesting where you raised about these informal

border crossings. Could you give us a little more history on that

and then I probably will go to Customs and the other agencies in

Washington to get some written testimony and response. So anticipate that they are going to respond to what you are saying, so we

can have a good back and forth.

Is there anybody from Customs here who would be able to address that broader question of the border crossings at Big Bend

here today?

Mr. LONGORIA. I have Special Agent Ken Cates from BICE that

is here. I do not think he has been sworn in, but——

Mr. SOUDER. Does he have—he is in charge of El Paso, does he

go as far as——

Mr. LONGORIA. Which includes the west, yes.

Mr. SOUDER. Could you come forward, so we can—if you will

raise your right hand.

[Witness sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Kenneth Cates, is that right, C-a-t-e-s?

Mr. CATES. That is correct.

Mr. SOUDER. Special Agent in Charge, El Paso, for investigative.

I would like to have Mr. Deckert describe a little bit and then if

you have any comments on the border crossings.

Mr. DECKERT. OK, without going into stories about my aunt, I

would like to give you a little background.

I worked at Big Bend from 1975 to 1980 as the chief naturalist

down there, came back about 3 years ago as superintendent.

The fellow who had been living over in Mexico and was the

owner of the restaurant in Boquillas, which was a traditional place

where people from the park would go over and have a meal, buy

a souvenir and come back into the park—it had been traditional for

generations, died not long after I got back there. And I was concerned that with his informal leadership status in the community,

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that perhaps the wrong element might move in. And sure enough,

not long after, we had some drug sales in the park across from that

crossing. And at that time, we, the Park Service, closed down the

crossing for a few months because we wanted to make a point that

was not acceptable and we did not want that kind of element over

there. And subsequently we have had meetings and cooperation

with the State police of the State of Coahuila, who now patrol more

regularly up into that area and know of our concerns and want to

keep it safe for visitors to go over there.

Of course, 11 months ago, when the border crossings were closed,

all of them, they were saying that the reason for that was because

they had enough agents to do that now and patrol those, but also

because of September 11 and what had happened and concern

about terrorism after that.

Our concern was though that, as opposed to this area, which is

a huge population center, we are on the frontier of both countries.

There are no paved roads up to the villages or anywhere near them

across from Big Bend National Park, and anywhere on the border

is almost a crossing just like those traditional border crossings. You

close those three little points on the border and you still have 245

miles where people can continue to cross. And so our concern was

with the villagers over there in the villages who, for generations,

had made their living on tourist trade legally, that they would have

perhaps no other alternative than to leave, the villages dry up, that

opportunity for visitors to go over and enjoy that culture would disappear or they perhaps would turn to illegal activity.

So we have been working with Customs here in El Paso to develop some sort of official way to open one or more of those crossings and allow that to continue. As I said, with hopefully friendly

relations restored with those villages, that they would be more likely to use legal means of making a living as opposed to illegal

means, and perhaps work with us in trying to keep out the kind

of element that we do not want to get into this country.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Cates, would you like to make some comments

on this and where we stand in progress?

Mr. CATES. Well, it is a very complex problem, complicated in

large part due to the current Federal laws that mandate entry into

the United States, both for merchandise as well as for individuals,

be through approved and formally established ports of entry. So

that, particularly in the Big Bend area, in essence that 245 mile

border, to be in strict compliance with the current Federal law,

every entrant would have to go through the port of entry at Presidio. And as has been pointed out here, it just traditionally has

not been—it is just not feasible, you just cannot conduct your commerce, you cannot conduct many just human necessities to be able

to travel down the river and make formal entry through the established POE there, port of entry.

So the Customs Service or in our new configuration, has submitted some proposals to our headquarters to try to address that particular problem. A number of innovative issues are being considered up in our office of rulings and regulations now. They range

from some specialized paroling of significant or humanitarian type

significant individuals into the United States such as firefighters

and law enforcement officials from Mexico, as well as something as

64

far reaching and innovative as establishing a foreign arrival zone

in the Big Bend area which would give greater access to the now

closed informal crossings.

But it is very difficult to balance the needs of the local area with

the needs of national security, which in large part drove the closings of those historically informal crossings.

Mr. SOUDER. Knowing I am headed a little into a quagmire and

I am going to try not to get into this for too many minutes, but I

want to kind of get the parameters of it so we know where we are

headed from here, because this is an interesting phenomena that

while this is a dramatic example, probably exists many places

along the border, but with some nuances that I would like to followup.

So first off, you are saying these crossing were illegal in the first

place. By informal, you mean illegal crossings.

Mr. CATES. That is correct.

Mr. DECKERT. But also we had a memorandum of understanding

with U.S. Customs that allowed U.S. citizens to cross over and

come back for awhile, and we were operating under the assumption

that was in effect.

Mr. SOUDER. And when those crossings occur, were you—without

understanding, because I am not from here, only know a little bit

about the park, a little bit about the cities there—are there communities on the U.S. side that are grandfathered into the Big Bend

Park where they were going to visit or are they going up through

the park to the highway system in the United States?

Mr. DECKERT. Well, when Mexicans came over at those crossings,

in most cases, they were going to the developed areas in the park.

There is a little grocery store——

Mr. SOUDER. To enjoy the resources of the park.

Mr. DECKERT [continuing]. Gas station and so forth, and then

back across the border.

Mr. SOUDER. And is there a way when they came across that

they could have gone through the park, beyond the park and would

there have been a checkpoint at the roads coming out of the park

to make sure that was not a way for illegal immigration or narcotics to move through an authorized route? Is that why Customs,

their concern on national security became greater? Let me ask that

question, Mr. Cates.

Mr. CATES. Well, actually I believe it was the Border Patrol that,

you know, is the entity tasked with closing those borders, but that

certainly is a factor in that it is a vast, remote, very rugged area

and there are no formally established areas of ingress and egress

that you could sort of choke off illegal traffic. So once you get into

the Big Bend area, you—if you are successful, you certainly have

access to I–10.

Mr. SOUDER. Let me try that question one more time because it

was—I mean that was part of the answer.

From the illegal border crossing points, were there informal or

legal roads that connected to the ways to get in and out of the

park?

Mr. DECKERT. Yes.

Mr. REYES. Mr. Chairman, can I—there are three types of ports

of entry. There are Class A, which is a 24-hour, fully staffed one;

65

there’s a Class B that is open during designated times and then

there is a Class C, which is what we are talking about here, which

are the—it is not an illegal crossing. I just want to make sure that

gets on the record. It is an understanding that in these remote

areas, communities do not have access to doctors, to shopping and

those kinds of things, so what is being characterized as informal

crossing is basically sanctioned by the Department of State. That

part of it I am not completely clear on, but it is sanctioned government to government so that firefighters, so that doctors, so that

shopping and those kinds of things can be accommodated in both

ways.

Because interestingly enough in this area, in some of these communities, the U.S. citizens that live on our side depend on the

Mexican stores and the Mexican community for medical services

and stuff like that, as remote as it is in there.

So I wanted to make sure that the chairman did not go away

with the wrong impression here, because there are those three

types of crossings.

Mr. SOUDER. But we have some places on the north border like

this and they are shut. One is near Seattle, which is a community

that is actually on a peninsula going back to Canada, and they

have to go through a border crossing, they can no longer do the informal—and in Minnesota. And part of the key question here is

does this connect to a regular road. In other words, I understand

the need for some flexibility, does it connect to a regular road?

Mr. DECKERT. Yes. Conceivably people could go on the roads up

into the United States. But there are two Border Patrol checkpoints on both of those major highways that go into and out of the

park.

Mr. SOUDER. So the Border Patrol checkpoint could catch that.

I want to ask one more question on the Port Authority to Mr.

Longoria. In the south Texas part of the border, they are clearly

making a high percentage of the currency seizures that are reported to the Federal Government right now, yet you have more

narcotics going back. Are you looking at more outbound checkpoints or are you going to work with that? Because presumably

currency is coming back through here in even greater amounts.

Mr. LONGORIA. Right. I guess we do not have the resources to do

as much of it as we want to do. We have been focusing more on

outbound under alert level orange, and we have been somewhat

successful. We are also looking for any neutrality violations, firearms, that kind of thing, and work very closely with the El Paso

Police and the Sheriff’s Office using forfeiture fund moneys and so

we set up special operations to target southbound, but we do not

have resources to do that all the time. So I do not know if that answers your question, but we are doing it, not as much as we would

like to.

Mr. SOUDER. Because tracking the money is one of the main

ways to catch people.

Mr. Reyes, do you have any other questions?

Mr. REYES. There are several things that I wanted to make recommendations to you, Mr. Chairman. The first one is the Border

Patrol and other agencies, in particular the Border Patrol, has a

system of reporting that is called the G–23 Report. You still use it?

66

Mr. BEESON. Yes.

Mr. REYES. It has broken down all the information that you are

interested in. The categories are divided in there for the kinds of

people that are arrested, male, female, children. The last entry. I

would recommend that you ask the Border Patrol for the G–23 reports. It is a monthly report and your staff can evaluate and analyze it and give you a synopsis of the information that you are looking for.

Mr. SOUDER. Thanks.

Mr. REYES. On everything from seizures to people they arrest,

people they encounter.

Mr. SOUDER. One of things—we were trying to figure out why

this border crossing has less currency seizures even though is has

more of the other.

Mr. REYES. Right. So anyway, that’s a recommendation.

The other thing I wanted to say—and I know that the Sheriff

and I hope the Chief of Police in the next panel, make a comment

on this because the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area designation for border communities, and particularly for this west Texas

area, that pot of money is being used to fund many different

things, including this year, things that are being funded other

places with the money from that account that is desperately needed

along the border region for the kinds of reasons that you are hearing in this testimony. So I would recommend—and I will be alert

to the next panel to make those issues clear to you, but that is one

part of it.

The other one is that the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program—and this is in reference to my colleague making the comments about the impact that illegal immigration has had in his

community and his district. This is the program that we provide

money to local State governments to be able to compensate for the

impact of illegal immigration all across the country.

Mr. DEAL. No, just certain States. We do not get it.

Mr. REYES. Well, you are eligible for it, you have to put in for

it, but you are eligible for it.

Mr. DEAL. My understanding is it is only the top five.

Mr. REYES. No, and I will work with you on this, but let me also

tell you that incredibly enough, this was a program that, although

it is very much—very important and very much needed by our communities all across the country, that was targeted for elimination

by OMB and we successfully fought that plan to do that.

We need to increasingly weigh in on these kinds of issues because they affect the very kind of impact that you are making a

point here in this hearing. So I will be glad to provide you the information on that.

And I will yield back my time, because I know——

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Deal, do you have other questions?

Mr. DEAL. I know we are running short on time and have two

more panels to do. Thank you all for being here.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you each for your testimony, we will followup with some written questions. Anything you would like to submit

additional, any charts and graphs you would like to submit for the

record, and then if you will work with us with your workload and

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trying to respond to the written questions that can fill out the

record.

Thank you very much, each of you, for coming today and for your

testimony.

If the second panel could come forward: Mr. Carlos Leon, chief,

El Paso Police Department; Mr. Leo Samaniego, sheriff of El Paso

County Sheriff’s Department. If you will remain standing, we will

do the oath, if you would raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of our witnesses responded in the affirmative. I welcome you here today and thank

you for having us in your wonderful community and providing us

with a safe visit thus far to El Paso.

We will start with Chief Leon.

STATEMENTS OF CARLOS LEON, CHIEF, EL PASO POLICE DEPARTMENT; AND LEO SAMANIEGO, SHERIFF, EL PASO COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

Mr. LEON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of this

very critical subcommittee. I am Carlos Leon, the Chief of Police

for the El Paso Police Department.

The El Paso-Juarez borderplex encompasses about 2 million people. Economic conditions and geographic terrain couple to make a

fertile ground for drug traffickers. Estimates are that a very significant portion of all drugs entering the United States do so

through this region. This is evident by the many large seizures in

and around the area that are intercepted on their way to larger

metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.

The El Paso Police Department is one of the primary law enforcement agencies in the region serving a population of over 600,000

with approximately 1150 officers. Federal and local initiatives fund

numerous innovative law enforcement efforts attempting to stem

the flow of drugs into the United States through our ports of entry

and other points between them. However, the Rio Grande River

does not deter smugglers and the vast desert areas in the region

provide easy access points across the border.

Recent national events have diverted Federal, State and local

funds to ensure homeland security. Increased security at international borders has caused drug trafficking organizations to

change their tactics as well as creating new challenges to law enforcement agencies. Rather than transporting illegal drugs through

the ports of entry, drug smugglers are instead choosing other

points along the border by land and by air.

Marijuana is the drug most often passed through the El PasoJuarez area followed by cocaine and heroin. Other drugs such as

Rohypnol, Ecstasy and methamphetamines are also seen, but with

less frequency. These drugs are often warehoused in stash houses

in residential areas of the city. Local hotels and motels are frequently used for clandestine drug transactions. Drug smugglers use

a variety of secret compartments and other covert methods of

bringing drugs into the United States including a complex series of

underground tunnels joining El Paso and Juarez.

To effectively address the drug trafficking problem in the area

and ultimately prevent large amounts of drugs from reaching the

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rest of the United States, the city of El Paso and the El Paso Police

Department need a significant increase in resources. High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area [HIDTA] funding is critical to our success. Increasing personnel alone will not solve the problem. The department needs state-of-the-art equipment and technology to improve law enforcement efforts in remote areas, for conducting surveillance, and gathering intelligence. Training opportunities are

limited in the El Paso area and because of our geographic isolation

from most major cities, require expensive travel costs and time

away from duty.

To effectively stem the flow of narcotics through this area and ultimately prevent large amounts of drugs from reaching the rest of

the United States, the city of El Paso and the El Paso Police Department need a significant increase in personnel and resources

dedicated specifically to narcotics trafficking reduction. Increasing

personnel alone will not solve the problem. The department is in

need of state-of-the-art equipment and technology to improve law

enforcement efforts in remote areas, for conducting surveillance

and gathering intelligence. Additional resources, such as prosecutors, probation officers and judges, are needed to followup and supplement law enforcement efforts.

HIDTA funding is critical to our success in combating drug trafficking in the region. Due to Federal budget constraints, our funding has remained level for 4 consecutive years, placing increased

burdens on local resources. Drug trafficking on the international

borders is not just a local problem. It is a national crisis with farreaching social and economic ramifications. Furthermore, smugglers will bring anything across the border if the price is right. As

easily as they can cross a large load of marijuana or cocaine, so

could they bring weapons of mass destruction—if they have not already.

State and local agencies are in the greatest need of assistance as

they shoulder the burden of law enforcement efforts and prosecution of criminals. Investing in State and local resources that are familiar with the situation, the region and the systems currently in

place would greatly affect the flow of narcotics through El Paso.

The El Paso Police Department is tasked with not only protecting

its citizens from the threat of drug activities and related crimes,

but with protecting every major city in the United States from the

drugs that enter daily through the Juarez-El Paso corridor. If success in curbing the drug trade in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago

and New York is to be achieved, we must start in El Paso.

Thank you very much.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you for your testimony. Sheriff Samaniego,

thank you for coming today.

[The prepared statement of Chief Leon follows:]

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Mr. SAMANIEGO. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, members of committee and Congressman Reyes, thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you today.

Realizing that our Nation’s security is our No. 1 priority, that

does not diminish the problem that we have with drug trafficking.

In many ways, these two issues go hand in hand. The very routes,

methods of concealment and human resources used by illicit organizations for drug trafficking and alien smuggling are also a threat

to our Nation’s security.

The national drug abuse problem has a significant impact on the

community of El Paso, and the entire southwest border. Drugs

flowing across this border are, by and large, not staying here. Drug

trafficking is not a local problem, it is a national problem, and it

requires the attention of our Federal Government. The failure to

stop drug smuggling here today could mean 1,000 kilograms of

marijuana will end up on the streets of St. Louis, Detroit, Atlanta

or some other city in the United States.

Efforts to secure our border against terrorism have not curbed

the use of the southwest border as the most significant gateway of

drugs being smuggled into the United States. Federal resources

have been expanded in cities to our north to combat drug use and

distribution, yet most of the drugs have originated from this border.

If illicit organizations can bring in tons of narcotics through this

region and work a distribution network that spans the entire country, then they can bring in the resources for terrorism as well.

There are four issues that plague this area. First, the Federal

Government is expecting local agencies to assist with the national

drug problem.

Second, local agencies have been asked to add resources to national security efforts.

Third, the Federal Government is expecting more of its Federal

agencies on the southwest border.

And fourth, local and Federal agencies have been overwhelmed

with manpower shortages that deal with these issues.

My agency’s efforts to assist with the national drug problem is

most clearly seen in our involvement in two programs: The High

Intensity Drug Trafficking Area and the Edward Byrne Memorial

Grant.

The HIDTA program in west Texas is an excellent example of the

cooperative efforts of local, State and Federal agencies working together to address a problem. The West Texas HIDTA Executive

Committee has consistently developed strategies to address the

drug trafficking threat in our region. This success is due to the

local planning, decisionmaking and execution that the HIDTA program embraces.

The achievement of the West Texas HIDTA, however, has been

limited by level funding. With an increase of only $150,000 over the

past 4 years, combined with the increased costs in services due to

normal inflation, the West Texas HIDTA has been forced to make

cuts that impact the effectiveness of its multi-agency initiatives.

The Edward Byrne Memorial Grant program has a long history

with my department. The El Paso County Metro Narcotics Task

Force has a successful history in battling local and regional drug

72

distributors in our area. This success is also threatened by funding

cuts for this program.

While all the Federal law enforcement agencies in this region

could use more resources, I will highlight several that need your

specific attention. Since September 11, 2001, several agencies were

reorganized to improve national security. The first, as seen in this

region, was the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With a shift in

priorities, the El Paso Office of the FBI drastically reduced the

number of narcotic investigation groups. The impact of this has

been enormous.

The Drug Enforcement Administration office in El Paso is undermanned for the level of drug trafficking in this region. It is inconceivable to think that the agency with a responsibility of fighting

this Nation’s drug problem is so poorly under-staffed in El Paso.

And in closing—I thought I had it down to 5 minutes, but obviously I did not. [Laughter.]

Let me say that time is running out. I do not think it is time

to just ignore the problems that we are having here on the border.

Everybody is short-handed, they are short of resources and I think

the American people, the people in this community for a fact, demand the best that we can give them.

Again, gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to be here with

you.

[The prepared statement of Sheriff Samaniego follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. And your full statement will be in the

record and your comments toward the end were very helpful in

your written.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. I was going through it additionally, because one of

the dilemmas we have is that the—because we are all under tremendous budget pressures and because it is so easy to get into a

political battle over the funding priorities, whose deficits are bigger, I am betting my deficit is bigger than your deficit. I mean I

know it is even proportionally. Trying to do that, often it is hard

to get specific data. You gave us some very good data here.

We have been trying to monitor what is actually happening inside the FBI, reducing from six to two; is the DEA picking up the

slack? The answer is no, they are not picking up the slack here.

You say they have fewer agents than the FBI, in your testimony.

We often ignore the importance of the U.S. Marshal’s Service. We

are not able to say that in your verbal, but in the written, it says

this is the largest, highest number of Federal warrants in the Nation for Federal marshals.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Has that office stayed stable? Is that increasing, decreasing, do you know?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. We have had the same number of deputy U.S.

Marshals in our Fugitive Task Force from the inception of that

grant. They have not been able to put anyone else there. We have

not been able to because of the lack of funding.

Mr. SOUDER. What is the functional result, when you do not have

enough U.S. Marshals? What is the functional result of not having

enough marshals?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. There are so many outstanding warrants that

there is no way, with the number of people that we have assigned

to the task force—and it is the U.S. Marshal, my department, I believe the Police Department, Border Patrol and other agencies participate—there is no way that we can keep up with the warrants

that are generated almost daily. People not showing for court, etc.

Mr. SOUDER. In other words, it does not do us any good to pass

laws, it does not do us any good to say we are going to do this, if

in fact we cannot go get them. That is in effect what you are——

Mr. SAMANIEGO. We have not been able to put them all in jail

within 1 year, let me put it that way. There are just too many of

them.

Mr. SOUDER. You said that with the funding you have been

forced to reduce the number of personnel assigned to the HIDTAs.

How many did you have?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes, sir, we have been getting level funding

every year, which means we get the same amount, and the cost of

operations goes up every year and the salaries, fringe benefits, gasoline and so forth. Somewhere along the line, you have to cut something and usually it is an investigator, maybe equipment, something they need to be able to do their jobs, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. So have you had a reduction in personnel? Your testimony said you reduced——

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes, we have.

Mr. SOUDER [continuing]. From four to three?

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Mr. SAMANIEGO. I do not have the specific numbers. We just

went through a reorganization.

Mr. SOUDER. If you could provide that to us.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. We will be meeting with the HIDTA tomorrow I believe.

Chief Leon, have you seen increased pressures on your department, has it stayed about the same, what changes have you seen?

How long have you been chief?

Mr. LEON. I have been with the Police Department 29 years, I

have been chief for about 41⁄2. Mr. SOUDER. You have a lot of experience.

Mr. LEON. Yes, I was born here and raised here in El Paso.

There has been a tremendous increase, it is not slowing down.

We have to assign an inordinate amount of our personnel to work

the narcotics arena, so it is taking its toll in what I think is a national problem rather than a local problem. In many cases, we are

not reimbursed for all the calls that we handle at the international

bridges because it does not mean just one police car going out and

taking care of—whatever the threshold is, we pick it up. So it is

a whole area of personnel that we have to use and store the drugs

before the court date.

Mr. SOUDER. You mentioned twice in your testimony, showing

the importance to you, on this equipment question. I presume you

have gone through most of the programs. Is it more you do not

have enough equipment, is it that there are certain things that you

need that you are not getting? We are obviously redoing the one

grant program underneath the Office of ONDCP, we are about to

mark that up again. Is there something in there that you are not

getting or is it more just not enough dollars?

Mr. LEON. It is a little bit of both. We do not have enough of the

equipment that we do have. We cannot afford some of the more sophisticated surveillance equipment. We have an aviation unit that

is in dire need of parts, we have 1960 vintage helicopters and that

we obtain through a surplus program. The parts that are needed

to keep them up in the air are not being produced any more, so

we have to rely—now we are looking for another purchase that

really the city cannot afford, but it is very critical that we get these

aircraft up in the air because they are a tremendous help insofar

as stemming the tide.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Reyes.

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Sheriff, just for the record, when you say that you have been flatlined in terms of the budget over the course of the last 4 or 5 years

under HIDTA, is it because there is no money, no additional money

in HIDTA or is it because there is additional money but it is going

other places?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Well, a little bit of both, sir. Let me just give

you an example about the Southwest Border HIDTA, which is one

HIDTA encompassing the entire southwest border, it is California,

Arizona, New Mexico, west Texas and south Texas. We are west

Texas. When the first HIDTAs were funded, or the Southwest Border HIDTA was first funded, I believe it was 1991, each partnership—that is what they call us—received $6 million. And let me

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read what they are getting now, this is the 2002 fiscal year HIDTA

funding.

Arizona is getting 24 percent of the total amount, which is an increase of $7 million, they are getting $11.2 million. California is

getting a little over $11 million. South Texas is getting $8.5 million. New Mexico is getting $7.7 million and El Paso—and I think

everybody in the world considers this the primary smuggling area

into the United States—we are receiving $7.6 million. So we are

hurt in this respect.

Last year, they had almost $1 million in supplemental funding.

California got $500,000, south Texas got $250,000, Arizona got

$47,000, New Mexico and west Texas did not get one penny.

Mr. REYES. Do you have the statistics in terms of workload for

the corresponding areas that you just read the funding figures for?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. No, sir, I have no idea what they produce. I

think El Paso is one of the—or this West Texas HIDTA is one of

the highest producing HIDTAs in the United States.

Mr. REYES. Would it be possible to get those?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. I think we can; yes, sir.

Mr. REYES. And provide them for the committee for the record.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes, sir.

Mr. REYES. Thanks.

There are a couple of other things that I wanted to make sure

we got on the record, Mr. Chairman. One is that not only are U.S.

Marshals understaffed, but remember that it does not do us any

good to have the agencies that are out there arresting the people

that are violating the laws, we have to have the marshals to be

able to transport them, we have to have the money to be able to

fund the jails. And I want the Sheriff to comment on that. But we

also have to have the prosecutors and the judges.

We have been traditionally neglected in all of these areas along

the whole border region. And that is—we will furnish you the statistics, my office has them, I will furnish them to you for the

record, but I wanted the Sheriff to comment on the detention part

of it and the amount of money that you get and the amount of

money that really local taxpayers have to eat because of the lack

of Federal funding.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. First of all, let me begin by saying that the

SCAAP, which is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program,

was finally funded in 1998. In El Paso, we have been getting a little over $1 million every year. This year, we have I believe almost

13,000 men and women that were illegal aliens that were charged

with some crime and they wound up in our jail and yet, if we follow

the guidelines of the SCAAP program, only 589 are eligible to be

thrown into the pool nationwide, hoping that we get a little bit of

money back to El Paso County. They also cut the funding from

$550 million, which is what we had last year, and even at that

amount we got about 10 cents to the dollar. Now they cut it down

to $300 million and everybody in the United States will be submitting names. They have added more things that eliminate some of

the prisoners. Now we have gone from 3 days in jail to 4 days in

jail. And every time they do that, you eliminate a whole bunch of

them.

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We have a contract with a U.S. Marshal to house pretrial Federal inmates and they, of course, pay El Paso County for that at

the rate of $57.98 a day and we have been averaging a little over

800 per day that we keep here. But there is no profit margin there

for El Paso County. The Marshals will send in the auditors, they

will audit the cost, what it costs to keep one inmate in jail and this

is the figure that they come up with, not the one that I say this

is what we are going to charge you. It is the actual cost and they

cannot give us one penny over that. So right now, we are having

at least 800 daily. And it is a burden on El Paso County and at

the same time a blessing, I guess, they do bring in several million

dollars to El Paso County.

Mr. REYES. Again, reiterating what the Sheriff said about the

number of cases, about 13,000 cases where illegal or undocumented

people were involved and of those, he got reimbursement for about

500.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. We have not got it, Mr. Congressman, we have

not got it yet. They are still going through the process of everyone

registering on line and then submitting the information that they

require. We probably will not get—maybe July or August we will

know what we are getting, and it is going to be minimal.

Mr. REYES. But that is going to be about 500 of those cases,

right?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. We will have—we put in for 589.

Mr. REYES. 589 out of 13,000.

Mr. SAMANIEGO [continuing]. Out of 13,000 that met the criteria

for partial reimbursement.

Mr. REYES. So that nets out less than 10 cents on the dollar that

is spent by the El Paso County, that gets reimbursed through a

Federal program, where the responsibility is on the Federal Government.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes.

Mr. REYES. Because they are charging the Border Patrol, the

Customs, the INS with maintaining the integrity of our border

area. They have not been able to, so that generates 13,000 cases,

of which only 500 or so are able to qualify for SCAAP funding.

With that, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. We are in the process of probably adding additional beds to our two jails in order to meet the demand for space.

And this is—right now, there has been some changes made with

the U.S. Marshal and I understand there is a different system, another individual that will deal with the counties to find beds for

pretrial Federal inmates. We have not been able to talk to this individual. I cannot move forward with the building until we know

what is going to happen, because we have to be assured that they

will be able to bring more inmates to El Paso County. They keep

telling me they have 1,400–1,500, they have them scattered all over

west Texas. They would love to have them here in El Paso, but we

would have to build more beds, and the county is willing to do that.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Deal.

Mr. DEAL. I would like to thank both of you gentlemen for coming today and I want to tell you that your experiences are not

unique just to the border. Sheriff, 40 percent of the prisoners in my

county jail are illegal aliens. We are so overcrowded with illegal

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aliens in my county jail that my sheriff, who met with me about

3 weeks ago, he is having to farm prisoners out to other counties.

We are paying other counties more per day to house our prisoners

than we are being reimbursed by the Federal Government for holding their own prisoners. So it is a huge problem, it is a problem

everywhere.

Let me walk through a few things though that I would like to

understand.

Mr. Leon, do you have a municipal jail or do you use the county

jail facilities?

Mr. LEON. We use the county.

Mr. DEAL. OK. When you have someone coming across at a border crossing, who has drugs, etc., one or both of you respond to that

I assume with your units, is that correct?

Mr. LEON. Yes.

Mr. DEAL. Are you the initial detaining law enforcement agency

that detains those individuals initially?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. No, sir, let me explain. If it is under the threshold—and I do not know if you are familiar with that word, but if

someone comes in, for example, or tries to cross the border with 48

pounds of marijuana, it falls under the 50 pound threshold that the

Federal Government has.

Mr. DEAL. So they will not take the case as a Federal case?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. They will not take the case, they call us or the

police department. We respond, we pick up the individual, store the

vehicle, bring in the evidence and so forth and charge him with a

State crime.

Now there is another program that I think our Congressman

Reyes is very familiar with and instrumental in getting for El Paso

and the southwest border, is the reimbursement for costs to house

those individuals as well as the prosecution, all the expenses of

going through the judicial process.

Mr. DEAL. Do you have an estimate as to the number of cases

or percentage of cases that actually come under your State prosecution jurisdiction versus the Federal? Do you have any opinions or

numbers on that?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. The last figure that I heard, and I may be off,

I believe was between 300 and 400 cases a year.

Mr. DEAL. That come to the State level prosecution.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Through the State, here in El Paso, yes.

Mr. DEAL. And that is because—one of the phenomena we are

hearing is that the size of the shipments across the border are decreasing and the quantities—more of them, but smaller in sizes.

One of the implications that would have, of course, is that if they

are under that threshold limit, they are going to put greater pressure on local jurisdictions versus the Federal jurisdictions. So obviously that is going to affect your operations, I would think.

Mr. LEON. Absolutely.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes, sir. I believe at one time, they were confiscating the load with the vehicle and then sending the individual

back across. I do not think that is acceptable, so we came into the

picture and—but there are a lot of vehicles that come across with

46, 47, 48, 49 pounds. They seem to know exactly how much they

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can put in there and maybe the ordeal or the penalty may be less

than what they would get otherwise in Federal court.

Mr. DEAL. How do you all operate on the forfeiture provisions?

What agreements do you have with regard to forfeitures? I would

assume that if it is a case that is exclusively going to be prosecuted

in the State court system, do you get all of the forfeitures in those

cases or do you have agreements worked out with sharing of forfeitures, either confiscated vehicles, cash, etc? What is your agreement?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. We do confiscate the vehicle and if it is awarded

to El Paso County, we will auction it off. Most of them are junkers,

they know there is a possibility they are going to get arrested and

the vehicle seized, so most of them are 1980 models.

Mr. DEAL. Is that determination made, there again, based on

whether or not you are going to have to handle the case at the

State level? Is that the determining factor?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Well, if we get the case, the only asset is the

old automobile really, there is no money involved or anything else.

Mr. DEAL. What about if you have a seizure of money.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Well, we do get quite a bit of drug forfeitures

awarded to El Paso County from DEA or the FBI or Customs,

agencies that we work with, and let me tell you, that money is a

blessing. We are able to buy equipment, we are able to train people. If it was not for that, we would be in bad shape.

Mr. DEAL. So that is money you get on top of the other reimbursement programs that we have talked about here.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Yes, sir. If we participate in a case with any of

the other Federal agencies, and there is a seizure of funds or automobiles or homes, we are entitled to a portion of it.

Mr. DEAL. Is there a formula that you follow on that or is it caseby-case determination?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. I believe the Federal Government has a formula

that they use.

Mr. LEON. Congressman, as far as the Police Department, we

have a tremendous working relationship, of course, with the Sheriff’s Department and the FBI/DEA. When it is a Federal seizure,

most of time it works out to about 80/20 percent, we pick up about

80 percent of whatever was confiscated. When it goes through the

State courts, we have an agreement with the district attorney here

where for their cost, it is about 25 percent, so it is 25/75 percent.

Mr. DEAL. OK.

Mr. LEON. And I agree with the sheriff, it is a tremendous help

insofar as augmenting our budget for training purposes and whathave-you. But I heard earlier in some questioning as far as what

are we doing, is there money coming back—there is a tremendous

amount of money coming back into Mexico and we are intercepting

some of that. We started what we call the GRAB unit, ground, rail

and air, and again, it is multi-agency, it is a HIDTA initiative and

we have been able to in this fiscal year alone, we have intercepted

just in that one unit, over $700,000 in cash.

Mr. DEAL. And you share that forfeitures at the local level, some

of it going to the Federal I assume.

84

Mr. LEON. Well depending on how it is staffed, some of it will

be Federal, some of it will go to the State and we share with the

DA or if it’s Federal, then it goes 80 percent/20 percent.

Mr. DEAL. Thank you.

Mr. LEON. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. Every time we have a seizure and we are involved, we have to put in a request to share in the forfeiture.

Mr. DEAL. Yes.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. So it is case-by-case.

Mr. DEAL. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Let me briefly for the record state a

couple of things on HIDTA, some of which we may be able to fix

a little, some of it is far beyond our ability to fix. Some of it I am

exasperated with.

We are having a major discussion right now whether there

should or should not be a Southwest Border HIDTA. I, former

Speaker Hastert when he chaired this subcommittee, and others,

strongly pushed the last administration under General McCaffrey

in particular, to organize the southwest border. There was some resistance initially not only in the HIDTA but in the management of

the southwest border. Because logic would tell anybody looking at

the border to say this needs to be looked at broadly, not narrowly,

that each subsection is going to argue that they need more because

there is never enough dollars, there is never enough to meet it. But

somebody has to be looking at a broader perspective and say OK,

if we harden over here, they are going to move over here; if we

harden over here, they are going to move over here; and to think

ahead. Every baby boomer like myself was raised under Vietnam

and always felt like the guerilla guys are always two steps ahead

of us, we are one behind, how do we think ahead and anticipate

the next move, not just react. That is the concept of trying to do

it.

In the process of trying to do that, some Senators and some Congressmen have more clout in the Appropriations Committee, have

more clout over here or there, and it does not fully make sense to

look at how the dollars are divided along the border. It is more of

you look at the different States and try to figure out how to combine States. Partly what happened since we started the HIDTA

program is Houston got a HIDTA, Dallas got a HIDTA for north

Texas and all of a sudden Texas started to get more HIDTA dollars

because the Arizona border HIDTA already had Tucson and Phoenix as subparts of it. So when new Texas HIDTAs came up, the

Senators from the other States are saying Texas is getting more

dollars. So some of your dollars have been diverted to other parts

of Texas in the original funding formula because those HIDTAs

were not there. So it is not that the dollars are not coming to

Texas, it is that the more populous areas of Texas and their legislators were stealing it from—bottom line, not literally, but you know

what I mean—were taking it from it in the distribution of the border States.

Furthermore, New Mexico hardly has any border and now Albuquerque and Santa Fe are in the top of their HIDTA and the question is, is this a border HIDTA and do we have a border strategy.

We are trying to decide whether to wall off subsections so the apVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:41 Nov 21, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00088 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\90205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
85

propriators cannot get at it, to move it around. In addition, quite

frankly, the program is supposed to be high intensity drug trafficking Areas, not high intensity usage areas.

I had an offer early on to make my area a HIDTA, but I did not

take it because I thought the program was supposed to be drug

trafficking areas. Yes, drug trafficking occurs everywhere, but the

question is how do we prioritize on a national perspective. But Tip

O’Neill’s old adage, all politics are local, has got—whenever you see

a huge bundle of money, everybody is in it. And I honestly do not

know whether we are going to get this unscrambled.

Clearly in narcotics if we do not control the south border, it expands and becomes exponentially more of a problem north. But do

not hold your breath that we are going to be able to fix the HIDTA

problems. We will probably deal with it a little. I know the drug

czar understands—Director Walters—understands the pressures in

this concept, but whether we get this redone with all of the fingers

in the pie and the political reality of the situation, I do not know;

is the answer to your question.

So we will do the best we can given the budget pressures we

have and it is very hard to say OK, Houston, by the way, you do

not have a problem, that is one of the biggest cities in the country,

they have a huge drug problem. They tell us oh, yeah, the big loads

are coming into there, they are moving, they are jumping the border. It is very difficult to sort through. But I wanted to share with

you because you are at the point of one of the major crossings in

the whole system and I wanted to share with you the complexity

of why it is so hard as individual Congressmen to look at it and

try to fix it. You know, you can put as much pressure as you want

on your Congressman and he is only going to be able, quite frankly,

to fight say Senator Domenici, Congressman Kolbe, who is the appropriations cardinal, Senator Kyl in Arizona—we each do what we

can and in the House, we have to get in little packs in order to—

clusters of us to be able to battle a Senator over here. It is not an

easy process, he is working hard to do that, we are trying to look

at the overview. But do not hold your breath on this one, this is

very hard to try to—the HIDTA program has moved in ways none

of us intended it to do.

I also know that every community in the country with illegal immigrants and narcotics is struggling with jail space, struggling

with reimbursement, struggling with different kinds of challenges.

Your numbers are huge and what we have to figure out in a national perspective is if we do not deal with it at the border, it is

only exponentially going to increase past that.

I do not get elected by the people in El Paso, I get elected by the

people in Indiana. The people in Indiana see their local problems

and do not necessarily see the full connection to the border at El

Paso no matter how much I want to talk about it. With the local

sheriff saying my jail is overcrowded here and there, I am elected

by them, that is the dilemma we face in the political system.

Hearings like this help raise it. Statistics like to give a 13,000/

589 number probably overwhelms most people’s numbers, it is

helpful to understand. And then when we say by the way, there are

people there 10 times and you are not picking them up—well,

86

where would you put them. It becomes a fundamental challenge for

members who ask us that. That is helpful to understand.

I would like to also ask for the record, from my knowledge of the

border, and just trying to figure out how this works, and maybe

Chief Leon could address this as well, Sheriff, with the possible exception of San Ysidro, as you move east from there it is less, this

has the most population on the U.S. side at the immediate border

crossing. There are some cities back up clearly if you are going toward Phoenix or going toward San Antonio. What are some of the

unique challenges you face because it is not as though there is a

buffer zone before you get to the city? Furthermore, to an outsider

trying to figure out how to drive around this area, you are clearly

going along and Mexico is to my right; no, Mexico is to my left; no,

Mexico is north of me. Could you explain some of the challenges

that you face in local law enforcement with just the intermingling

and the ability to bring in narcotics, how in the world would you

deal with terrorism—one guy trying to bring across something?

Mr. LEON. You know, Congressman, there are smugglers who do

very well—there will be situations where they will stick a duffel

bag through a culvert and there will be a car waiting and within

seconds it is gone and they just run back into Mexico.

Mr. SOUDER. Would you elaborate on what you mean by the tunnels?

Mr. LEON. It is a sewage system that runs even to the heart of

downtown El Paso, huge tunnels in some places where you can

even drive a truck through.

Now one of the problems that we have here in El Paso is flooding

when it does rain because they have grates, some of those tunnels

have grates in them and of course, the debris will collect and it will

just flood certain portions of the city. So those smugglers will

smuggle people, they will smuggle narcotics, they will smuggle anything they want through that tunneling system. And this is something that our mayor is addressing, we are working with the Federal agencies to address this issue.

We are within, as you just mentioned, seconds of Juarez, where

we used to have a tremendous auto theft problems here. In 2 minutes they are across the border, many times we would see them

drive it across the border and there is nothing we could do in most

instances. Now, we do not have the problem that we used to. I

think Dallas, San Antonio, Tucson, Albuquerque have a much bigger problem in auto theft side as compared to El Paso. But because

of the proximity, there is an area in El Paso, where we have citizens assaulted if their car breaks down on a certain street. Now

we are working very closely with the Border Patrol and that seems

to be easing away.

As you know, just some months ago we had some Federal agents

assaulted. So it does add tremendously to our burden, where other

cities would not worry about their tunneling under the city because

there is no smuggling going on under there, but we do.

Mr. SOUDER. Sheriff, do you have anything to add?

Mr. SAMANIEGO. We have somewhat of a little different problem

than the city police officers do. We patrol a lot of rural areas and

right now, the closer you are to the center of El Paso, the more

Border Patrol you see along the border with Operation Hold the

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Line, and let me say that I think they have done a tremendous job

reducing the number of people that were crossing into El Paso, and

the crime rate has gone down as a result. I always gave them credit for that. It was our Congressman that started that process or

that concept.

But the farther you get from downtown El Paso, you start seeing

wider gaps between Border Patrol units or any other law enforcement, so there is a tremendous opportunity for anyone that is waiting on the other side, waiting for the Border Patrol car to go by

and then they give the signal and here comes a bunch of people on

foot or trying to drive across the river bed.

So I do not think with the manpower that the Border Patrol has

or we have, there is no way that we can control the border. And

that scares me. Anyone can come across and they can bring whatever they wish to bring with them. I think it is something—we

keep talking about this war on narcotics or the war on drugs, but

we have not really committed the troops that are needed for everyone here to do the job. Every individual or every pound of narcotics

that leaves El Paso, somebody else is going to have to deal with

the problems. Everything that we stop here, you do not have to

worry about somebody else having to work a case or pick up somebody with an overdose, etc.

The problem is here. They have increased Federal manpower in

almost every city north of here. Yet, this is where the drugs originate. They go in all directions. I think it makes sense to take a little more notice of what is going on here and do something about

it.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Reyes, do you have any other comments?

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to make a

couple of observations for the record.

First of all, the chief and the sheriff made mention of the uniqueness of the issues and the problems that they have to confront because of the proximity of the border. Literally, if you will go to

Anapra, which is about 10 minutes away from here, you will see

that the railroad tracks parallel the border area, in some areas as

close as you and I are sitting here to the front row of the auditorium. We have had the distinction of being probable the last area

in the country that systematically was experiencing railroad hijackings. They would stop those trains in that area, they would dump

cargo from the railroad boxcars and drag it across the border. We

are talking about everything from tires to clothing, to television

sets and there is a lot of goods that are shipped by train right

through this very area.

The FBI agents that the chief was talking about actually were

working an operation in that area that I am describing to you and

got badly mauled and beat up, almost killed, by this gang of train

hijackers.

Those are the kinds of issues and problems that collectively law

enforcement agencies have to deal with here. The only thing I

would ask the sheriff to clear up is when he mentioned the word

troops, you were not talking about military.

Mr. SAMANIEGO. No, sir, no.

Mr. REYES. OK, good.

88

Mr. SAMANIEGO. I do not think the military—and I have all the

respect in the world for what they do, they are trained to kill, fight

wars. We are dealing with a different situation here, this is not a

war where everybody is shooting at each other. It takes a very special, well-trained individual to work the border, to do—and we have

had a couple of incidents where young Marines were placed on the

border and the results were tragic. I do not think we need them

on the border. We need to increase the Border Patrol, the Customs,

Immigration, all the other agencies that deal with the problem of

now terrorism on top of everything else.

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Deal.

Mr. DEAL. I am not going to another round of questions, but I

do want to thank all of you for being here and thank you for what

you do.

Mr. SOUDER. I too want to thank you for all you do. Like you

said, anything you intercept means it is not in my home area or

somewhere else, somebody is not getting killed. We hear anywhere

in the Nation where we go, where we hold a hearing, everybody we

have talked to, 75 to 85 percent of all crime is drug and alcohol

related, whether it is child support payments, bankruptcy, child

abuse, spouse abuse as well as direct drug-related crimes. And

some of these leftists around the country who act like we should

back off of narcotics and everything would be just fine—our families and kids and communities would be a wreck if it was not for

the work that you and others in law enforcement are doing. And

it is hard enough to do the battle now and we thank you for your

efforts.

With that, we will move to panel No. 3. Mr. Bob Cook, president

of the Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce; Mr. Ruben Garcia,

Truancy Prevention Specialist, Ysleta Independent School District

and Mr. Jose Luis Soria, Clinical Deputy Director, Aliviane Drug

Treatment Center. If you would please stand and raise your right

hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. SOUDER. Let the record show that each of the witnesses responded positively.

How do you say your school district?

Mr. GARCIA. Ysleta [pronouncing].

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you very much for coming. It has been a

long hearing. You have the advantage of having heard the others.

I very much appreciate you participating in this and making sure

we round out—we have some hearings where we focus directly on

drug treatment, we have had hearings where we were focusing—

because we also have oversight over the Commerce Department—

on trade. But when we try to come in, we try to do a holistic view

to make sure the hearing record picks up the diversity of the challenge in prevention and treatment and trade, so that we do not

have the hearing record just look like our only focus is on law enforcement, which is a critical component and is a direct oversight

responsibility of this committee.

So Mr. Cook, you are first up.

89

STATEMENTS OF BOB COOK, PRESIDENT, GREATER EL PASO

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE; RUBEN GARCIA, TRUANCY PREVENTION SPECIALIST, YSLETA INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT; AND JOSE LUIS SORIA, CLINICAL DEPUTY DIRECTOR,

ALIVIANE DRUG TREATMENT CENTER

Mr. COOK. Chairman Souder, Vice Chairman Deal, Congressman

Reyes, thank you for this opportunity. We appreciate that you are

taking into consideration the concerns of business and commerce as

we deal with these issues.

My name is Bob Cook, I am the president and CEO of the Chamber and our Chamber represents over 1,100 businesses in the El

Paso region. Our primary function is to develop a regional economy

that creates jobs, that expands the tax base and improves the quality of life for all the citizenry in this region. And on behalf of the

Greater El Paso Chamber of Commerce, I would like to welcome

you to our community.

Until I realized I was taking the oath, I was prepared to tell you

we are the largest international border community anywhere in the

world, but I guess I must change that to we believe we are the

largest international border community anywhere in the world.

Our borderplex here consists of over 2 million population and, as

Congressman Reyes suggested earlier, the real number is probably

somewhere between 21⁄2 and 3 million people. We are home to approximately 1,000 manufacturing operations on both sides of the

border. Many of these manufacturing operations relate to one another. A plant in El Paso will sometimes supply multiple plants

with certain component parts in the city of Juarez. Over the centuries, El Paso has been a trade route linking the north to the

south, east to the west for native tribes, Spanish explorers, western

settlers and today’s global commerce.

I am not going to go into all of my written testimony but I do

want to hit some highlights and try to paint a picture for you with

the map that I have provided you with there, and you might want

to take out your map and I will talk about some things on there

in just a few moments.

Our community has capitalized on the opportunity to grow a

manufacturing and trade-related economy based on geographic

strength. In 2001, more than 668,000 commercial vehicles crossed

our bridges. About 20 percent of all NAFTA trade crossed into the

United States through one of our ports of entry here in El Paso.

In that year, the goods imported through El Paso valued approximately $22.7 billion while exports through El Paso going southbound were valued at approximately $16 billion.

Now look at the map. I want to try to paint a picture for you

here and I hope this is not too elementary, I certainly do not want

to be. But I think it is important to understand the vital relationship between El Paso and Juarez.

As you look at this particular map, it is very difficult when you

first look at it, to see where one city stops and the next one begins.

But in this particular map—and you may need to help me with the

colors here because I am color blind—the upper portion of the map,

the light blue areas, I believe that is light blue, is El Paso. And

then the beige colored area to the south is our sister city of Juarez,

Mexico. You can see the extensive transportation linkages that

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exist throughout this region, how they interconnect with one another and I want you to see that the relationship between our two

cities is just as vital as the relationships that exist between Minneapolis and St. Paul, between Dallas and Fort Worth, between

Chattanooga and those northern communities of Georgia, there

along the State line, and Washington, DC, and Arlington, VA.

And imagine, if you will, as you think about those communities

and you think about how our communities are inter-related, there

are literally four bridges that connect our two communities, and at

some point as travelers go across those bridges, they are going to

be stopped by a Federal agent and those Federal agents are asking

questions and their vehicles are being subjected to inspection. And

by the way, we believe that those inspectors are legitimate and

necessary, so this is not an argument against what is going on.

They are legitimate and necessary inspection and interdiction efforts that are occurring on those bridges. And we understand that

national security and the health of our Nation is at risk.

But they have a tremendous impact on us, nonetheless. And that

impact is measured often in lost time and productivity, because

there are business relationships and business transactions, legitimate business transactions that are occurring back and forth

across those bridges on a daily basis. There are family and friendship relationships that are trying to occur back and forth across

those bridges. There are children trying to attend school back and

forth across those international bridges. And vehicles spend sometimes hours at a time idling on those bridges. And again, the impact is measured in lost time and productivity.

There are environmental issues due to vehicular emissions there,

and frankly, there is just a great disincentive for legitimate commerce and passage to take place.

What I will say is I have a lot of things in my written testimony.

We see the answer is not in stopping these inspections or these

interdictions but making them better through technology, and we

talk a lot about technology that we are piloting here on this part

of the border and the need for increased staffing at these ports of

entry.

We are proud of the relationship by and large that we have had

with the Federal agencies here on this part of the border to help

expedite the movement of legitimate people and legitimate commerce back and forth.

If I could make just one other statement. One of the technologies

that we have implemented here is called a dedicated commuter

lane where individuals are going through criminal background

checks and other types of rigorous inspection to determine that

they are low risk for traveling through a special dedicated lane between the cities of El Paso and Juarez. As of right now, we have

over 15,000 users registered and approximately 10,000 vehicles.

And it is interesting to note that by using this technology during

peak hours, we are able to clear more traffic through that one lane

that exists on one international bridge than in El Paso’s largest

international bridge with all 10 lanes open. So it is a great testimony to the success of pre-clearance technologies. We are advocating for the same kinds of things for cargo and even looking at it

for mass transit on our international bridges.

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And by the way, the dedicated commuter lane that does exist on

our downtown bridge, our Chamber of Commerce owns it. We saw

this as a huge need to help expedite the movement of people back

and forth across our border and we invested more than $2.2 million

to build that lane and its facilities and we lease it back to the Federal Government.

Thank you.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. It was a little bit unfortunate example

to pick, Chattanooga in Nathan’s district in the north part of Georgia, because every time I try to drive from Indiana to Florida I go

through and the first thing when you come into his district you see

this monument, the sign, for the Chickamauga Battlefield where

they tried to kill the last time the Yankees tried to go down

through his district coming from Chattanooga. [Laughter.]

Mr. Garcia.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cook follows:]

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Mr. GARCIA. Thank you very much. My name is Ruben Garcia

from Ysleta Independent School District and El Paso Independent

School District. It is certainly an honor and a privilege to be here

before you.

Congressman, I would like to thank your staff, because I was one

of those late-comers that you were gracious in giving me 24 hours

to put something together.

I am giving a different skew here. The impact of drug trade on

the population of the city, which is the 21st largest in the United

States and the fourth largest city in Texas, and what I tried to do

is—I have been working in this area for around 30 years—categorize into four basic areas which constitute education, income,

health and quality of life. I think you did a pretty good job, Congressman, of giving a synopsis of the impact it has once—although

we are not with law enforcement, I think they have done a great

job, but the fact of the matter is they do get across and it is having

a very negative impact in our communities.

I am not going to go over my testimony, which is there. What I

did do last night is I did some additional points of interest that I

would like to share.

Traffickers are using minors to carry drugs across the border,

known as mules, and because the penalty to minors is small, they

are usually released back into Mexico the next day. Also, heroin is

inexpensive right now. We are experiencing many new heroin addictions on both sides of the border, Juarez, Mexico and El Paso.

One quarter of a gram of heroin dose used to be $25. Now you can

get it on the streets anywhere in Juarez for about $5.

Many drive-bys committed by American youth along the border

are committed while high on glue or other inhalants, a cheap high.

Every Friday and Saturday, you see thousands of American youth

cross into Mexico to dance, drink and get drugged, known as the

three Ds.

Along the border, we have youth that belong to tagging crews,

the party crews, drugs are very much part of this phenomenon

through parties called raves.

Drug pushing along the border is a must if youth go into gangland of importance, so the more they get into, jump-ins, drugs and

criminal activity is a big factor. In border cities such as ours, youth

take pride in drug accessibility. They proudly wear this by brandishing a three dot tattoo on their bodies, which means my life on

drugs.

By the way, Ricky Martin used in his movie and song, which

they glamorize. It is really sad. Many youth gang jump-ins are

done while girls and boys are under the influence of Rophypnol or

downers. Many times the girls are gang raped as part of a ritual

and many times without their consent.

It is well known that drug trafficking along the border brings

into play many unique and tough situations for our youth.

In conclusion, I would just like to say that unfulfilled needs and

expectations have an effect not only on the youth, but also on society which has lost the talent and contributions of a substantial portion of our generation. Society pays in economic terms as these

youth are treated for substance abuse, incarcerated for criminal activity and enter the welfare system. Society pays in the sociological

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and emotional terms when it produces fewer stable marriages,

fewer productive workers and few law-abiding citizens.

To stop the cycle of poverty, poor health and illiteracy, society

must address the impact of the border substance abuse and drug

dealing with El Paso youth. The cost is immeasurably unacceptable.

Thank you for letting me make these comments.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Garcia follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Could you just, for the record at this point, this

really is not a question, but you focused on a number of very specific as well as a few general points. Could you tell us a little bit

of what you do with the school system?

Mr. GARCIA. Absolutely. I run a truancy and dropout program,

sir. And basically we work with the courts and I will tell you that

a lot of kids—I have never seen a gang member that did not start

as a truant and I can tell you that we have dealt with thousands

over the last 3 or 4 years and I would say probably 70 percent of

them have a substance abuse problem. I would say that of the

gangs that are involved, the majority are involved in some kind of

criminal activity.

Mr. SOUDER. And when you say you work with the school district

at this point, are you a consultant to them or——

Mr. GARCIA. Yes, sir, we have contracts to work with them.

Mr. SOUDER. And have you done this for a long period or did you

do something before that in this area too?

Mr. GARCIA. I have worked for about 30 years in this area, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. With juveniles and truancy.

Mr. GARCIA. Yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Mr. Soria.

Mr. SORIA. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, subcommittee members. I would like to make a change to my initial presentation. I

welcome you to our Sun City. I think Mother Nature has played

a trick on me and maybe I should say the dust bowl.

But anyway, I also want to express my sincere thanks at being

provided the opportunity to present before you today. My name is

Jose Luis Soria. I am employed by Aliviane NO-AD, Inc., a community-based chemical dependency prevention, intervention and treatment organization. I am the clinical deputy director for this organization. My testimony to you today will focus on the humanistic aspect, but it will also take into account a holistic approach to the

drug trade and the disruption of social and human institutions that

this activity has on our community and, in general, to the State of

Texas.

The drug trade has created a catastrophic dilemma in the southwest and especially in and around the El Paso area, inclusive of

the outlying rural communities. I will not elaborate regarding the

west Texas rural counties—Hudspeth, Presidio, Culberson and Jeff

Davis—or as better known and referred to as frontier west Texas.

I think that the speakers before us have presented enough information regarding those areas.

This is not to say that other areas of our Nation have not felt

the scourge of this practice on our citizens, but as we all know, the

El Paso area, due to its geographic and topographic uniqueness,

has proven to be a preferred area for its illegal trade. We must also

take into consideration the economic dependence that has

metamorphosized between our city and our sister city of Ciudad

Juarez, Mexico and other border cities that create a close economic

or social tie to the north side of the border. This I believe is very

important, the closeness relates to our cultural ties, the heritage

and the lack of a sustainable economic resource on both sides of the

border has played an integral part in nurturing and facilitating

this lucrative, yet most detrimental activity. This multi-million dolVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:41 Nov 21, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00105 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\90205.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lar ‘‘business’’ has affected our youth, our criminal justice system,

our economy, our healthcare system and most importantly, our

quality of life.

As I stated previously, I will not be redundant and describe the

areas of west Texas or southern New Mexico, but I do want to

point out a couple of special areas that I think are very important.

Our regional economic plight is a major contributing factor that

has helped expand the involvement of many of our citizens, especially our youth, in this unsavory, illegal, yet lucrative act. I believe

Mr. Garcia alluded to that point. Even though many of our citizens

initiate their involvement on the business end—the means of making money, most often, they find themselves becoming victims of

‘‘the trade.’’ Once this occurs, of course, their psychological, physical and social functioning erodes very quickly. They soon become

a statistic that is associated with the criminal justice system, our

social welfare system, and of course our healthcare system. I believe Sheriff Samaniego and Chief Leon alluded to those two major

points of interest. Since involvement is not based on an isolationist

basis and the substance abuse is inclusionary of the family, we now

have a grimmer picture. Everyone in the household becomes a victim. Thus, that has an additional effect on the economic resources

of the city of El Paso.

I will not preach to the choir, as the saying goes, since this distinguished panel is comprised of many talented and knowledgeable

individuals. I will expound the need to establish and continue efforts that provide for various elements in the war against drugs.

First, interdiction is necessary in order to curtail the importation

of harmful substances into the State. The proposition here is of

course that less drugs that come into the country, the less victims

we shall have. We must maintain a vigilant effort in this area,

combined with collaborative and coordinated aspect with our neighbor to the south, since it will take a concerted effort to reduce the

trade.

Second, we must ensure that resources include the availability of

programming at all levels to avail those prevention, intervention

and treatment services needed by the citizens being confronted

with substance abuse related problems. The Center for Substance

Abuse Prevention [CSAP] and the Center for Substance Abuse

Treatment [CSAT] have proven that the application of the appropriate services when needed by the individual can have significant

impact on the reduction and complete stoppage of substance abusing behaviors. In essence, I am requesting that we utilize CSAT’s

premise: Treatment Does Work, and that we must maintain the

availability of service at a high level of conscientiousness as we

carry out efforts through the different levels of the drug trade.

In closing, I would like to reiterate that the drug trade within

the El Paso area and southern New Mexico has a very detrimental

impact on the citizens of El Paso. As stated previously, I presented

to you based on a humanistic aspect—not on an economic aspect,

not on a law enforcement interdiction aspect, but tried to emphasize the human side of it.

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In closing, I want to thank you once again for this opportunity

and hope that you consider all presentations made here today to

develop the most appropriate policies for this social problem.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Soria follows:]

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Mr. SOUDER. Could you explain a little bit what your drug treatment center is, is it a long-term, outpatient, combination, mostly

juvenile, seniors, alcohol, cocaine, heroin—just some of the types.

Mr. SORIA. It is a very comprehensive—in fact, it is Texas’ second

most comprehensive treatment program. It is a program that provides intensive residential services for the general population,

women and children’s programming. It has intensive and supportive outpatient services for adults. It has an intensive and supportive outpatient youth treatment services. It provides prevention,

intervention and family services programming. We have offices in

the El Paso area, in Alpine, TX and one in Van Horn, TX. We also

have our infectious diseases unit, prevention unit, which comprises

programming for HIV risk reduction testing, counseling, tuberculosis and Hep-C services, sir.

We work within the schools, we work within the judicial entities,

we work with the juvenile judges. We work with the adult probation office and the State parole office.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. We’ll go to a round of questioning here.

Mr. Cook, clearly one of the things everybody agrees on that we

are trying to figure out how to do on a national basis are these fast

type lanes and I commend the Chamber for having taken a direct

initiative while we are trying to figure out how to do it in a lot of

places. In Detroit-Windsor, that has been a big help. Would you be

receptive and do you believe the business community would be receptive in this area to, if somebody abuses that extra privilege of

a fast lane, whether it be a truck clearance, auto or other, that the

penalties for violations should be double or triple? In other words,

we are only going to spot check, but we do not want—the question

is how can, if you get a special privilege, we have some kind of——

Mr. COOK. I think there is no question, we would be supportive

of that. We have seen these kinds of things as extremely beneficial

to the local economy and to our businesses individually here, and

we would not want to see any activity continue that would put that

at risk. So we would be very supportive.

Mr. SOUDER. We met on the north border hearing and a number

of Canadian trucking companies said that they would go along with

that. One of the big problems—and if you have any thoughts that

you would like to add to this—is who would get the penalty and

how we could be just in figuring that out. That is also a standard

problem we have—is it the shipper, is it the trucking company, is

it the driver. What if the cab is different than the load he is hauling, and we need a good clear way to establish that because it becomes pass the buck when we actually catch somebody.

Mr. COOK. What I would like to do, Mr. Chairman, is just consult

our foreign trade community here over the next few days and then

we will submit that to you in writing, if that is OK.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you.

Mr. Garcia, in your opinion, one of our most difficult—let me give

a couple of things and you can give a little bit of an answer today

and if you want you can add more in depth—prevention is—we say

our programs in Colombia are only working medium well, we are

having troubles on the border. I have met hundreds of drug addicts

who have gone through six or seven treatment programs. It is very

hard, it recurs, sometimes it is more of an insurance thing—it is

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complicated treatment. Similar on prevention. In other words, in

looking at how do we make our prevention programs more effective.

We are doing reauthorization of the drug czar’s program. One of

that is our national media campaign. We would appreciate any

thoughts you have on that, particularly how it is—what we could

do to better target and influence at risk youth as opposed to those

who are already persuaded that drugs are bad.

A second thing is the largest single dollar amount is the prevention programs in the schools, Safe and Drug-Free Schools, which

are basically so watered down around the country, it is very difficult to figure out—I was very active in the reauthorization of that

and it was very frustrating. We have like 27 uses that people can

use for the money in any given school. I finally got a little clause

in that says they have to at least mention at the tail end drugs are

bad. But at one point, I got so frustrated, I offered an amendment

that the funds could be used to improve educational skills, because

obviously if you can read and write and get better education skills,

you are less likely to get on drugs too. The point, however, of that

program was supposed to be a direct program on anti-narcotics.

And any thoughts you have that we might look at in school-based

prevention programs that would be more effective, particularly in

reaching at-risk kids, particularly junior high, particularly males

and often we have a separate problem with suburban rich kids

than we do—which by broad definition my kids would fall into—

than we do in Hispanic and African-American kids. And I am not

sure we pick up those nuances.

Any thoughts you have on a national ad campaign, prevention

programs in the schools or other targeted things we could do, particularly as we look at kids who are already caught up in the probation system and are now coming back out into the community,

either while they are in the prison system and in the probation system and before they are coming out.

You can take a brief stab at that here, but I would welcome any

specific suggestions you have in that area.

Mr. GARCIA. I would like to, first of all, say that I will think

about those and do the best I can here, but I will certainly submit

something in writing along those lines.

I belong to the Dropout Task Force with the Texas Education

Commission and we have representatives from all over the State,

superintendents, what-have-you. This is exactly what we are looking at. We all know that Just Say No never worked—not in this

part of the country. I think prevention efforts are important. You

know, if you look at my testimony, here in El Paso, a large portion

are single parents, they are just making ends meet with two jobs,

and there is a lot that can be done at the schools working with atrisk, working with these kids, doing—getting the community involved. There is not enough resources and never will be, but I

think it is important to get the criminal justice, the educational entities, community services such as Aliviane provides. That is what

we are doing here, trying to approach it from a holistic standpoint,

because it is very difficult.

And so that is what we are focusing on right now in the State

of Texas with this task force, is to provide prevention, intervention

services, get them at the front end before they wind up, you know,

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in the criminal justice system and prisons and, you know, where

it affects our tax base, our welfare system and so forth.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. Mr. Reyes.

Mr. REYES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

My first question is for Mr. Cook. As you know, we have had

kind of a departure control system, that means that people would

get checked coming into the country and would be checked leaving

the country. Can you share with us an opinion of how that would

impact our area here, if at all?

Mr. COOK. OK. That is something that we spent a lot of time

talking about within the commercial and industrial community

here in recent months. We are very concerned about the impacts

of an exit control system, particularly if we try to implement it before the proper technology is in place, and particularly if we do not

see a dramatic increase in the amount of resources, particularly

human resources, staffing, at those international ports of entry,

than what we currently see right now.

As I alluded to earlier, we are seeing trucks and vehicles in line

on our international bridges sometimes as long as 1, 2 and 3 hours.

Part of the problem is because we do not have enough staff to man

all northbound lanes on those ports of entry at all times. And if we

are going to do something that is just merely going to take resources away from that effort to now check southbound, then we

see a much larger negative economic impact on this economy than

what we have seen historically.

And let me tell you how that translates. With China really

emerging onto the scene in the last couple of years as a manufacturing force, just in the last 18 months, we have lost more than

90,000 jobs in the city of Juarez alone in production and manufacturing, manufacturing-related jobs. We feel like if we are going to

do something to try and turn that trend around, we will not be able

to compete on labor costs against China—Mexico cannot compete

on labor costs with China—but where we can compete is because

of our geographic proximity between our two countries and enterprise in those two countries, if we can expedite trade north and

southbound through those ports of entry, if we can somehow

through the utilization of technology and increased staffing make

those products and services flow more efficiently, then we can

somehow counteract the negative impact that we are seeing, that

is coming against this area from China right now.

So Congressman, we are very concerned about the implementation of those exit control programs.

Mr. REYES. Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Garcia and Mr. Soria. I would like

to know what is the average age of your clients, in particular focusing on school age, and then has the pattern changed in the last 3

to 5 years and if so, is there a difference between urban and rural

in terms of the clientele, the services and the impact in that 3 to

5 year period?

Mr. GARCIA. Congressman Reyes, let me respond that we have

seen approximately 6,000 families and students in the last 3 years

and we get them from age 7 to 18. Insofar as—you know, most of

the districts we work with are urban. I think Mr. Soria could speak

more to the rural, what kind of trends they are seeing there.

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Mr. SORIA. Adding to Mr. Garcia’s comments, I think there is a

distinctive difference between urban and rural, even the ages and

there are certainly some drug patterns involved that the communities do have.

For example, in the rural areas, you see a high incidence of alcohol abuse among young—and I mean young, 9 to 11 year old—

males, which we attributed to being part of the cultural processing;

you know, the rite of passage kind of thing.

In the El Paso area, we see a higher incidence of inhalant abuse,

amphetamines and barbiturates coming across the river, and the

age average there is between 10 and 11. Lately, we have seen an

increase on the cases that we see here in the El Paso area where

the females are taking on a greater number dysfunctionality than

the males. Traditionally, it has been males, we have seen this

trend I guess in the last 6 months.

Mr. GARCIA. Absolutely. Also, in addition, we have seen more females getting involved in gang-related activities. So those are the

differences.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Deal.

Mr. DEAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Cook, one of the things that I think all of us would like to

see is to allow commerce to move without undue impediments.

That is why one of my real concerns and I suppose one of my pet

peeves is the fact that one of the ways that we could do that would

be for Mexico to be more cooperative on dealing with the two issues

that are our major problem; that is, the flow of drugs into our country from their country and the flow of illegal immigrants from their

country into our country.

If those would cooperatively attempt to address those issues

more aggressively on their side of the border, then we would be

able to reciprocate without having these undue impediments as

they cross the border. Would you agree with that?

Mr. COOK. I do not know that I am fully capable or expert

enough to answer fully there, but that may very well be the case,

sir.

Mr. DEAL. Well, I think, you know, we have had a better working

situation, although it is now somewhat in question, with Canada.

And part of that freer flowage has been that there has been mutual

cooperation on both sides of the border with mutual goals in mind

and I think that is one of the messages that we all need to send

to our counterparts across the border here.

Mr. COOK. And let me say, in our Chamber in the last year, we

have been undertaking a more proactive effort to work with business groups on the other side of the border to jointly lobby issues,

both in Washington and Mexico City, that impact trade. And I

think this is a message that we could help deliver from you and

other Members of Congress through our business community contacts in Mexico back to Mexico City.

Mr. DEAL. Well, I think we all need to work in that direction on

that.

Mr. Garcia, as a former juvenile court judge, I deeply appreciate

your comments and the magnitude of the problem and it is a huge

problem. And it is certainly one that we all share.

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I have a concern, because I see in my area that gang activity has

a direct linkage with, in our case, the distribution of drugs within

the community. Is there a connection here on the border between

the gangs and the drug activity, either in bringing it across the

border or in some distribution chain once it crosses?

Mr. GARCIA. In my opinion, I think so, most of them are involved

in some kind of either distribution or, you know, selling it. We see

a lot of those coming into our playgrounds, unfortunately, and recruiting younger ones to get involved. There are certain gangs here

that are pretty much involved in that kind of activity; yes, sir.

Mr. DEAL. Have your schools adopted any policies with regard to

dress codes or anything else that would prevent the display of gang

colors, paraphernalia, etc?

Mr. GARCIA. We have identified, particularly in the lower valley,

some campuses that had some gang-related activities and they

have what is called site-based management and some campuses

have done that, come out with school codes; you know, the dresses

that they wear, blacks and silvers and bandannas and—you know.

So some have and some have not.

Mr. DEAL. I think we all of course are searching for what to do

with those who are addicted and into the system. Have the programs that—Mr. Garcia, I would simply ask maybe Mr. Soria if

you would maybe comment briefly and then perhaps followup along

with Mr. Garcia on the two programs that the chairman alluded to,

the media program and the safe schools program, as to their effectiveness. Have you had working relationships with those activities?

Mr. SORIA. Yes, sir, primarily the—Aliviane NO-AD has been in

the El Paso area for the last 32 years. Throughout its history, it

has formed a network and collaborative effort that has worked with

the various entities throughout El Paso City and the county. I

think that, as I alluded to in my presentation, maybe in the written documentation, not in the verbal one, the problem is a community-wide, state-wide, nation-wide problem and it will take collaborative efforts from every one of those entities involved in order to

provide the most appropriate direct services at that appropriate

time of the child’s development, or in the parental engagement.

We work very closely with the school programs and the drug free

school programs sponsored by the Federal Government and by the

State of Texas. We also work very closely with programs within the

school system to engage and have a transitional process the follows

the child from the school campus into the home environment. In

other words, it has to be a complete transitional process so everybody involved can get into the picture.

Mr. DEAL. Just one real quick final question. There has been an

ongoing debate in drug policy in this country as to whether or not

the availability of drugs has any direct relationship to the usage.

Some would argue that it does, some would argue that it doesn’t.

Obviously you are here very close to a huge source of available

drugs. Is there any statistical information that would indicate

whether or not that proximity to a large amount of illegal drugs

translates into a larger percentage of the population using those

drugs? Do you know?

Mr. SORIA. I think several studies have been made. The most

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ernment has done. Since the usage of any type of substance, whether legal or illegal, is a result of a combination of factors, I do not

think that any study can preclude and say that any one single factor is the causal reason for a person doing drugs. I think it is a

combination of physical, psychological, social, environmental, familial and other types of elements that do affect that individual.

To give you an example, the suicide rate among teenagers is the

highest of all ages in the United States. There has been no specific

reason identified for that phenomenon, but yet it still exists. So I

am saying that it would be very hard to say and just get one specific reason why. But we must take into consideration that it has

to be a conglomeration of elements, that is why it has to be holistic

in its approach.

Mr. DEAL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Soria, do you do drug testing and followup or

is it self-reported?

Mr. SORIA. No, sir, we utilize the urine toxicology screening in

two ways. One, of course as a deterrent. It is a mind game really,

if the person does not know when they are going to get tested, that

often helps deter the individual from usage. We also use it as a

means of checking for true estimates.

Mr. SOUDER. Do you keep followup records for like 6 months, 2

years, 5 years?

Mr. SORIA. Yes, sir, according to Federal law and State law, we

are supposed to keep records for 3 years under the Federal requirements, State law says 5. Our CEO wants to keep the records forever. We have records dating back to 1970.

Mr. SOUDER. So you can—when you keep those records, do you

have records as to whether those individuals have entered into

other treatment programs post taking yours?

Mr. SORIA. Yes, sir. We are—under the State of Texas, we fall

under the Texas Commission of Alcohol and Drug Abuse and basically it has a client identification processing where initially it kind

of follows up the individual receiving treatment services. Now

through higher tech innovations, the Commission is moving toward

a high tech client identification computerized system; yes, sir.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you. And I know we have had a long day

here, I wanted to just make a brief comment on the backhaul.

There is a huge problem when we are not getting the money going

back. There is just no question. I mean we can holler all we want

at the Mexicans where the narcotics are coming in, but the turnaround is yeah, the money is coming in the United States and your

people are still working and moving the money. This has to be addressed. And the proof of the pudding is that if we do back checks

and find stuff, we are going to do back checks. The Canadians are

complaining on the north border, they actually have cooperative

teams pretty good about trying to catch it, but in the two experiments in Montana and Niagara, we are finding guns and money

going the other direction, or we are finding B.C. Bud coming in and

we are shipping cocaine and heroin. We actually have as many

drugs going into Canada as they have coming in to us almost at

some borders.

Now what we need to do is figure out how to do this same fast

pass system. Then the next challenge for you as a business exec is

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now to not drive small business guys out because they cannot do

the large system that the large guys do. And I think your point is

well taken, that we have to simultaneously be getting our technology up at the same time we are doing it, but I see this as a coming thing, because when we deal with other countries, part of their

reaction is you are quick to try to watch coming in, but you are

shipping it to us. And they, quite frankly, in Mexico, are not going

to have the resources with which the deal with it, even if there

were questions of complete integrity here.

Mr. COOK. Mr. Chairman, I want to make sure I was clear on

my comments to you. We are not opposed to the exit control system, we are concerned about the implementation of it.

Mr. SOUDER. Because you are getting it in both directions then.

Mr. COOK. Precisely.

Mr. SOUDER. At the GM plant in Fort Wayne and meeting with

one of the Canadian Parliamentarians who was a GM plant manager there who was going to be the Fort Wayne manager—I have

the largest pickup plant in the world—that there are 100 border

crossings between Canada and the United States and I am 140

miles from the border in the making of each pickup. So you take

that from 5 minutes to 20 minutes to an hour, you have dramatically increased the cost of pickups.

Mr. COOK. That is right.

Mr. SOUDER. And so I understand the dilemma but this is not

going to be easily solved, particularly in the homeland security

where, fortunately since September 11, we have been able to intercept everybody. But what I have been warning everybody along the

borders and the stake that the border has is the first time the FBI

was a new Director, we were reorganizing, it was a relatively new

administration. The second time we have a terrorist attack in the

United States, if that comes, for example, parts through a truck,

if Atta crosses a border, the American people will not be as tolerant

to back off the intensity that we had on September 12, which was

kind of the disaster day for business and commerce, the rest of

September 11 and September 12, you could not function in the

United States with that kind of discipline. So we have to be thinking in those terms, because we know the terrorist risk is not going

to go down, the narcotics, as we work to get legitimate, kind of

semi, quasi-legitimate things where things shut down. We have

met with the Swiss banks and put tremendous pressure for tracking the money, they are going to go to illegal money, illegal means

smuggling immigrants, smuggling diamonds, smuggling mostly

narcotics, to fund terrorist efforts. So combined with the traditional

pressures you have, hits on homeland security are going to make

your job, particularly at these border crossings, huge in trying to

work with the Federal Government in trying to figure out creative

ways like you did on the leasing of those lanes, talking to other

Chamber groups around the country, some of the inland places

need to be invested in the border point too.

Mr. COOK. Yes.

Mr. SOUDER. And understand that having—trying to work out

these differences on bill of lading and how specific they need to be

can speed the VACIS machines. Yes, nobody likes to say what is

going to be on that truck until 1 hour before it has to go to the

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border, but the more specifics we have, the easier it is at the border crossing, not to slow them down. And this is a huge economic

dilemma, as you have said.

Mr. COOK. Yes. And let me say too, we are currently working

with Sandia Labs in this community too on the types of technology

that can be developed that will help these very issues that we are

discussing, and we are very hopeful that sometime in the near future, we are going to even be able to leverage additional investment by Sandia to come down here to the border and have people

on the ground directly studying these issues and doing original research on these issues.

Mr. SOUDER. Any other comments or questions?

Mr. REYES. Just a comment. In fact, we are going to be a test

bed for a new system of technology called pulse fast neutron analysis that, if it works, if it is field tested the way it has worked in

the laboratories, it is not inconceivable that we will have, for the

first time, a technology that we can build nothing but commercial

bridges or ports of entry, that will be able—you heard the testimony from the Customs Port Director that said on the average

what they have now takes about 7 minutes to do the scan. This

technology can do it in a matter of 2 minutes and it can simultaneously look for over 200 things that you focus on it. It can be

chain-linked so that instead of one truck or one container, it can

do three simultaneously in a 2-minute period.

So that is the kind of technology that I think is going to make

a difference for us. And we are literally on the threshold of it. We

are anticipating testing it here in Ysleta certainly by summer or

fall of this year.

And again, just thank you for doing this hearing. I know we

threw a lot of information at you, but I intend to also, for the

record, also give you some additional information.

Mr. SOUDER. Thank you, and one of the tough questions that we

are going to have is that machine is $12 million.

Mr. REYES. Well, actually that machine——

Mr. SOUDER. That will go down as——

Mr. REYES. It will go down, it will go down to less than $3 million.

Mr. SOUDER. The bottom line is that it may be that business and

industry is going to have some choices here to help share some of

the cost of that, because time is more valuable than money, as long

as it is a shared type of thing and does not get disproportionate

just to the borders. But those are going to be difficult questions because that is the type of machinery we need to go toward.

Mr. Deal.

Mr. DEAL. Well, Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank these witnesses and all the others and the people who have been here at the

hearing today, and also to express my appreciation to our fellow

Member of Congress and able representative of your area, Mr.

Reyes. Thank you very much.

Mr. REYES. My pleasure.

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Mr. SOUDER. Thank you again for coming, for being patient, for

being our cleanup hitters on today’s hearing. And with that, the

subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]

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