Sean Reyes: “we have been in contact with border patrol agents that currently are telling us that they are demoralized. Because if…”

“we have been in contact with border patrol agents that currently are telling us that they are demoralized. Because if you are an other-than-Mexican undocumented individual, you can come in. We have instances where they are actually flagging down our border patrol agents and they are asking local residents to call the border patrol so they can get what they call their permiso, or their permit, to be able to travel anywhere in the United States. This is an abuse of our immigration laws, and it is all because we will not fund and we will not establish temporary detention facilities. When I was chief in McAllen sector, we had the same situation in the mid- 1980s, where we had Central Americans coming in to the country. I was told that my agents were to issue I-210 letters, which is that permiso, that permit, they want today and wanted in the mid-1980s. I said, no, we are going to arrest them, and we are going to detain them. We put together a plan. We put temporary detention facilities down in south Texas, and guess what, Mr. Chairman? It worked. They stopped coming. And more importantly, Mexico had to become engaged to make sure that people coming from Central America did not come into Mexico and create difficulties for them. There is a solution, my colleagues, to this issue. The solution is enforcing our laws.…”