House speaker, delegation tour Arizona border over immigration

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House speaker, delegation tour Arizona border over immigration
July 22, 2006 06:46 AM

"I really believe you have to secure the border before a guest worker program works, or before any other program that you want," House Speaker Dennis Hastert said.
"I really believe you have to secure the border before a guest worker program works, or before any other program that you want," House Speaker Dennis Hastert said.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert and five other congressmen toured Arizona's border with Mexico on Friday to get a sense of how much help is needed to clamp down on illegal immigration.

After visiting Camp Grip, a remote, permanent Border Patrol desert encampment in the southwestern corner of the state, the group flew to Nogales for a nighttime ride in hilly terrain along dirt roads hugging 10-foot steel fencing aimed at curtailing illegal border crossings.

Border Patrol officials planned three stops along the fence, including one near a highly active location near downtown where agents in vehicles often are assaulted with rocks from Mexico.

"I really believe you have to secure the border before a guest worker program works, or before any other program that you want," Hastert said at an airport news conference a few hours before their late-night tour.

"If a patient is wounded and bleeding, the first thing you do is stop the bleeding. And we have a border that is bleeding; we need to heal it."

Hastert, R-Ill., said he has been to the border about a dozen times as a congressman but the trip was his first as House speaker. "It's tough, tough country," he said.

All Americans in all parts of the country are concerned about the issue of illegal immigration, according to Hastert.

"Every town's a border town, every state's a border state, and the American people believe that we ought to stop it," he said.

Hastert said it was essential to get down to the border as he and Reps. Peter King, R-N.Y.; Candice Miller, R-Mich.; Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz.; Bobby Rush, D-Ill. and Charles Boustany, R-La., had done.

"We can sit in Washington and talk and talk and talk and the Senate can pontificate and we can try to move legislation," he said. "Until you get down here, you talk to the people, you see what the topography is about, you see what the problems are, this give you a much better insight."

Hastert said the lawmakers had a frank discussion with Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen assisting them in the Yuma area -- part of President Bush's Operation Jump Start -- and asked them what is needed "so we get zero penetration."

Congress is committed to zero tolerance on the border, "but you've got to go down and talk to the people on the border, talk to what they're doing, what the problems are, what they need, what their frustrations are," Hastert said.

The delegation was seeking an understanding of those needs, he said, and "how we can work together in Congress to make our borders safe."

If the United States can work to help secure the borders of Iraq and Israel, "certainly we can work to make sure that our borders are safe across this country," Hastert added.

He endorsed an integration of high-tech to create a virtual fence, using ground-based radar, eyes-in-the-sky, sensors, fencing and vehicle barriers, as well as more personnel.

Kolbe said such a visit was important "for members to see what we have here, to see the difficulties of securing this border."

But he said that guest worker legislation and addressing the reality of 10 to 12 million people in the country illegally must go hand-in-hand.

Rush said securing the border is essential because otherwise, marijuana and other drugs "wind up on the streets of Chicago, wind up on the streets of most American cities, and we have to pay the cost of that."

He said a comprehensive approach is needed, virtual fences, boots on the ground, improved technology, better cooperation with the military.

"We have to secure the borders, then we have to figure out what to do" with the millions in the country illegally, Rush added.

The lawmakers met with National Guard members working at the border in Yuma before flying to Camp Grip, where up to a dozen Border Patrol agents work weeklong 12-hour shifts patrolling along the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge to intercept illegal immigrants and drug traffickers.

On Saturday, the delegation was to fly to El Paso, Texas.

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