Sylvester Turner: “We all know that securing our borders while maintaining the flow of people and commerce is one of the central challenges…”

“We all know that securing our borders while maintaining the flow of people and commerce is one of the central challenges of our new Department of Homeland Security. We are clearly investing in technology to achieve our goals, but we all know that technology alone can never do the job. It takes people. We know that people inspect packages and cargo coming into our country; people run the new programs, like the U.S. Visit Program, which has recently been awarded by the Department; people patrol the thousands of miles of our southern and northern borders; people detain and apprehend drug dealers and terrorists and criminal aliens. Since 9/11, the demands upon these border personnel have increased substantially. We know that the new Department of Homeland Security continues to fail to meet the demands of controlling our borders, as evidenced by the 7 to 12 million people that are estimated to be undocumented immigrants in our country and by the continuing reports of our porous southern and northern borders.”