On the recordOctober 9, 2013
I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma. Yes, it has been something that we have been dealing with in a very up close and personal way. As a matter of fact, about a month and a half ago, I had the good fortune to meet with Arizona's adjunct general. He's over the National Guard for Arizona. He was finishing up his term in office, and I said, Sir, what is your biggest concern when it comes to possible terrorist activity here in Arizona? We don't have a lot of the national weather pattern problems like they do in other parts of the country, like hurricanes and tornadoes. We have some dust storms every now and then, and we have had some terrible fires. But I was truly interested, and I wasn't trying to lead him in any direction. But he said, without a doubt, the thing that keeps me up at night, the thing that worries me more than anything is the porousness of our border, and the fact that about 15 percent of the people that we apprehended last year were not from Mexico. Many of those people were from the Middle East. What I worry about is because it is so lax and so easy to get across our border, that some terrorist is going to be able to get across the border with a suitcase bomb and detonate it and a lot of people will be injured or killed. That was his big concern. So then I had an opportunity to sit down with some of our ICE people that are stationed in Arizona. They are the ones responsible for interior enforcement. I had a long conversation with them.…
