Cord Byrd: “when Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, the Enhanced Border Security Act of 2002, and the Intelligence Reform…”

“when Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, the Enhanced Border Security Act of 2002, and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Congress recognized, on a bipartisan basis, the need to provide more people and more resources to patrol and secure our borders. The PATRIOT Act called for tripling the number of Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs investigators on our northern border. The Enhanced Border Security Act called for an additional 200 investigators a year--on top of the PATRIOT Act increases--for fiscal years 2003 through 2006. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act authorized the hiring of an additional 2,000 Border Patrol agents and 800 new ICE immigration investigators, and provided for another 2,000 detention bed spaces per year for 5 years. Together these laws reflect a consensus in the Congress that more needs to be done. But a consensus and a series of authorization bills produces only promises of progress, but promises do not make our borders more secure. In written testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 16, the Department's then-Deputy Secretary, Admiral James Loy, cited recently received intelligence as the reason for his concern about the threat facing the Mexican border. He said the intelligence ``strongly suggest(s)'' that al-Qaida ``has considered using the Southwest border to infiltrate the United States.…”