Henry Bonilla: “there is no Member in this body who represents a larger portion of the Mexican border than I do. I have almost 800 miles…”

“there is no Member in this body who represents a larger portion of the Mexican border than I do. I have almost 800 miles of the Texas-Mexico border in my congressional district. I oppose this motion, not because I am against enforcing our borders. In fact, we do have a war zone in some portions of my district with drugs and illegal aliens swarming across the river. But today's vote is not about having our military support the Border Patrol; they already do that. This is about having the military replace the Border Patrol along the Mexican border. As I said, we do have a war zone, but this is a situation that could magnify in the future. Instead of having police officers doing their job where they should be, we could have tanks and troops stationed at every street corner of America when there is a crime problem, in Detroit, Philadelphia, Miami or New York, and we do not want that. I oppose peacekeeping missions in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, and any other corner of the world, and I also oppose peacekeeping along the Mexican border. We do not need troops down there, we need to get together and support sending 10,000 new Border Patrol agents along the border to enforce our laws. That is how we can deal with this problem.”