Mark Souder: “first off, I have had hearings on this very subject, not as a whole, but because certain gentlemen may only be absorbed…”

“first off, I have had hearings on this very subject, not as a whole, but because certain gentlemen may only be absorbed in their own realm and may not realize that there is a narcotics subcommittee on drug policy and criminal justice. We have had multiple hearings on the border over the past few years, multiple. It has been brought to the attention in a bipartisan way about this problem with tunnels, and I am thrilled that the Judiciary Committee chairman has brought this bill. There have been 50 of these tunnels, 51 now with the new one just recently. There is a huge problem in the narcotics area. The reason it is primarily an issue in the narcotics area is because of the cost of building these tunnels, because of the engineering, particularly the ones with lighting and ventilation, that go between warehouse to warehouse is so expensive, that you basically want to use it for high-dollar items. The high-dollar items are usually cocaine, heroin, marijuana. Narco- terrorism on the major streets in the United States is coming through these tunnels, and it is about time we dealt with this subject. Furthermore, it appears, and the DEA believes, that the people who engineer and design these tunnels are then murdered afterwards, and sometimes the tunnels work night and day. The one in January was a larger one and appeared to be working night and day and were discovered; other ones they would only bring open for high-value targets to move through.…”