Xavier Becerra: “Mr. Speaker, we could have had a very good bill that would have received a very large vote in support. The majority did…”

“Mr. Speaker, we could have had a very good bill that would have received a very large vote in support. The majority did the right thing by removing a provision in from the bill that would have unfairly cut the pay of our Customs officials, our front line at our borders to prevent terrorist activity from entering into our country. It has provisions which provide for automation for a computer system which is outdated and which must be replaced so we can track what comes into this country. But yet this bill instead chose to sacrifice privacy under the guise of security. Regarding this immunity that the Customs Service so-called requested, first in committee, they could not explain why they needed it. But, more importantly, we know that the Customs Service has a terrible record when it comes to racial profiling. Our own auditors, the General Accounting Office, has found that while black female U.S. citizens are nine times more likely than white U.S. citizens to be the subject of x-ray searches by our Customs Service, they are half as likely as white female U.S. citizens to actually be carrying contraband. Let me repeat that. Even though African American women are found to carry contraband, U.S. citizen African American women are half as likely to carry contraband as white U.S. citizen women, they are nine times as likely to be searched.”