My highest priority is to protect our borders and enforce our immigration laws. While our brave men and women in uniform are fighting terrorists in Iraq and around the world, I need to honor and support them in Congress by working to protect America’s back door on the border.

Here is what I have learned from federal and state law enforcement authorities, and from my personal visit to the Rio Grande in October. Narco-terrorists and Islamic terrorists have figured out that our southern border is wide open and virtually unprotected, and that many Mexican government officials can be bribed or overwhelmed with superior firepower, so northern Mexico is now like Colombia - owned and operated by the drug lords. Dangerous criminal gangs like MS-13 and highly professional armies of killers like the Zetas are providing protection and muscle for the drug cartels that control northern Mexico. The Zetas are now so confident and so brazen that they operate at least one, and perhaps four, terrorist training camps in the open in Mexico near the Texas border between Matamoras and Ciudad Acuna.

Nuevo Laredo is the center of the lawlessness because the drug cartel that controls Laredo will control the largest and most profitable smuggling distribution center in the U.S. I learned this after visiting Laredo and meeting the brave law enforcement officers who are in regular gun battles along the Rio Grande. Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores and his heavily armed deputies equipped with body armor escorted me to the river at night and told me we could not turn on any lights, especially their police light bar strobes, because we would likely draw machine gun fire.

The sheriffs have also confirmed that an al Qaeda terrorist from Iraq was arrested at a rural location in Mexico about 60 miles southeast of El Paso, handed over to Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West and then transferred to the Brewster County Jail. The FBI questioned him closely, confirmed he was an al Qaeda terrorist, and then removed him from the county jail and took him to an unknown location about two months ago. I now know what the border sheriffs have known for a long time - Americans do not need to go to Iraq to see the war on terrorism - we only need to go to the Rio Grande, especially Laredo.

FBI Director Robert Mueller confirmed when he was under oath in front of my Appropriations Subcommittee that an unknown number of Islamic individuals from countries with known al Qaeda connections have entered the United States by using false Hispanic identities, speaking Spanish and hiding among the growing flood of illegal immigrants.

The FBI, the Department of Justice and the Border Patrol are doing their very best to enforce the law and protect our nation, but they are handicapped by Administration policies that have kept the borders open and kept Congress and the American people in the dark. Since Congress’ laws are being ignored or thwarted by the immigration bureaucracy, the best course of action in the short term is to go around the federal government and directly fund the law enforcement officers who can respond in the quickest, most effective and responsible way - our Texas border county Sheriffs.

Working with the newly formed Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition, I have drafted and filed H.R. 4360 with 16 of my Texas Democrat and Republican colleagues. Our legislation, the Border Law Enforcement Act of 2005, is designed to send up to $100 million to the border county Sheriffs along our southern border and give them the authority they need to identify, arrest and detain illegal aliens at federal expense. Best of all, the sheriffs can train and deploy brand new deputies in as little as six months while it would take the Border Patrol two years or longer to train and deploy new officers.

This newsletter is a little different from previous ones because I only wrote this portion personally. Our top notch staff members have written their own columns describing the work that we are doing together on your behalf. I am grateful for their dedicated and talented service and want you to get to know them a little better. Above all, I am profoundly grateful for the privilege of representing you in the United States Congress.

Sincerely,
John Culberson

December 2005 Newsletter

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