Tom Udall: “I am offering this amendment, along with my cosponsors Senators Heller, Bingaman, Feinstein, and Gillibrand, to provide…”

“I am offering this amendment, along with my cosponsors Senators Heller, Bingaman, Feinstein, and Gillibrand, to provide a simple fix to a loophole in the Tariff Act of 1930. Our amendment will allow our Federal agents and prosecutors to crack down on smugglers who use ultralight aircraft, also known as ULAs, to bring drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border. In the last Congress, then-Congressman Heller introduced a very similar bill in the House with Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords. That bill passed overwhelmingly by a 412-3 vote. I hope we can have a similar bipartisan result here in the Senate. ULAs are single-pilot aircraft capable of flying low, landing and taking off quickly, and are typically used for sport or for recreation. However, because of increased detection and interdiction of more traditional smuggling conveyances, ULAs have increasingly been employed along the Southwest border by Mexican drug trafficking organizations to smuggle drugs into the United States. The use of ULAs by drug smugglers presents a unique challenge for law enforcement and prosecutors. Every year hundreds of ULAs are flown across the Southwest border and each one can carry hundreds of pounds of narcotics. Under existing law, ULAs are not categorized as aircraft by the Federal Aviation Administration, so they do not fall under the aviation smuggling provisions of the Tariff Act of 1930.…”