Tom Tancredo: “it is not news to anyone in this House that the borders of this Nation for the most part are porous and undefended. As a…”

“it is not news to anyone in this House that the borders of this Nation for the most part are porous and undefended. As a result, millions of people have over the last several years entered this country illegally. Most of them come with benign intent. Others come with malicious intent. Among the latter are those that bring drugs into the country. I recently returned from a visit to the Coronado Forest near Nogales, Arizona, a forest I should say that is under siege, inside siege. This is an area that is experiencing the highest traffic of both humans and illegal drugs. There are so many people coming through in this part of the border into that particular area that the forest has been degraded. There are literally hundreds of footpaths that have been worn into the mountains. There are thousands of acres that have been torched as a result of people leaving their campfires. Mostly these people are undocumented aliens coming through starting campfires and moving on. Most of these people coming through or a great many of them are carrying narcotics on their backs in homemade backpacks. They come in large numbers, they come in small, but they carry tons of illegal narcotics. Mr. Chairman, they come through in small numbers and in large. They come through with people protecting them with M-16s, and not only that in the same area which had several incursions by members of the Mexican military and of the Mexican federal police.”