Ted Poe: “Thank you for yielding the time, and I appreciate Mrs. Miller for offering this legislation. Having been a resident in…”

“Thank you for yielding the time, and I appreciate Mrs. Miller for offering this legislation. Having been a resident in Texas, a border State with Mexico, I see firsthand the situation on the border. We hear everything politically from ``the border is safe'' to ``it's a war zone,'' or somewhere in the middle. We actually do have a border security problem. Here are just a couple of statistics to show you how the border is so porous: In our Federal penitentiaries, there is a group of people called ``criminal aliens.'' These are people who are illegally in the country and commit a felony in the United States. Twenty-five percent of the people in our Federal penitentiaries are criminal illegal aliens-- illegally in the country, convicted and sent to our Federal penitentiaries. I regularly go and visit with our border sheriffs, and I ask them periodically, How many people in your jails are foreign nationals? The latest statistic that 17 border sheriffs in Texas gave me was: 34.5 percent of the people in our jails are foreign nationals. So, yes, that crime comes into the United States is just one aspect of the lack of border security. But there is more. I recently met with some ranchers down on the Southwest border. The owner of this ranch on the border comes out to meet me, and he is wearing a bulletproof vest.…”