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Remarks President Bush at Signing of the Department of Homeland Security
Appropriations Act for 2006
Tuesday October 18, 6:34 pm ET
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 2005 / -- The following is a transcript of remarks by
President Bush at the signing of the Department of Homeland Security
appropriations act for 2006:
THE PRESIDENT:
Thank you all. Please be seated. Thanks for coming. Welcome to the White
House.
The most solemn duty of the President and the Congress is to protect the
American people. To help meet this responsibility we created the Department
of Homeland Security. This department united 22 federal agencies under a
single command with a clear mission, to protect the American homeland.
To protect our homeland we tore down legal and bureaucratic walls that
separated our intelligence agents from our law enforcement officers. We
disrupted terrorist planning and financing, as a result of the reforms.
We've used the Patriot Act to break up terror cells and prosecute terrorist
operatives and supporters. At the same time, the Department of Homeland
Security, by working with the United States Congress, has increased the
number of people guarding our borders, hardened security at our airports and
seaports and bridges and tunnels and water treatment facilities and nuclear
plants. We've helped give those most likely to encounter terrorists, our
partners in local and state government, the tools they need to do their job.
The bill I sign today supports our ongoing efforts to protect our homeland
with $30.8 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal year 2006, an
increase of $1.8 billion over the 2005 levels. This bill will help us
identify terrorists seeking to enter our country, safeguard our cities
against weapons of mass destruction, and better prepare the federal
government to respond to catastrophic attack.
The bill also includes $7.5 billion in vital funding to address the serious
problem of illegal immigration. We're going to get control of our borders.
We'll make this country safer for all our citizens. (Applause.)
I want to thank Secretary Mike Chertoff for the job he's doing. I want to
welcome Josh Bolten, Director of OMB. He's the money man. (Laughter.) I
appreciate Ambassador John Negroponte for joining us, the Director of
National Intelligence; Director Porter Goss of the CIA; Vice Admiral Scott
Redd, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. I want to thank the
members of Congress who are up here with me -- Thad Cochran of Mississippi,
Chairman of the Appropriations Committee; Senator Judd Gregg, Chairman of
the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security; Senator John Kyl,
Chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
I want to thank the members of the House who've joined me up here:
Congressman Hal Rogers, Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on
Homeland Security; Congressman Pete King; Congressman John Shadegg;
Congressman Chet Edwards, who happens to be my Congressman; Congressman
Sanford Bishop; Congressman Sheila Jackson-Lee. Thank you all for joining
us. I appreciate so many members of the House and Senate who have joined us
here today. Thank you for working hard on this good bill.
I appreciate Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Rebekah Salazar, who's joined us
on stage. Thank you. Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Elizabeth Briones, as well
as Patrol Agent in Charge Felix Chavez. They all work for the U.S. Customs
and Border Protection. Thanks for representing the good folks -- (applause.)
I appreciate those first responders who've joined us today. Thanks for
bringing honor to -- (applause.)
To defend this country, we've got to enforce our borders. When our borders
are not secure, terrorists and drug dealers and criminals find it easier to
come to America. This administration is going to work with Congress to make
sure we do our job, and that starts with having a clear strategy. And here's
how the strategy has got to be: We've got to strengthen security along our
borders to stop people from entering illegally. In other words, we've got to
stop people from coming here in the first place. Secondly -- (applause) --
secondly, we must improve our ability to find and apprehend illegal
immigrants who have made it across the border. If somebody is here
illegally, we've got to do everything we can to find them. And thirdly,
we've got to work to ensure that those who are caught are returned to their
home countries as soon as possible. The bill I sign today will provide
critical resources for all these efforts.
For the past four years, we've worked with Congress to implement the
strategy. To stop illegal immigrants from coming into the country, we've
increased manpower, we've upgraded technology, and we've improved the
physical barriers along our border. In other words, we've worked together to
implement the strategy.
Since I've been in office, we've increased funding for border security by 60
percent, and we've hired more than 1,900 new Border Patrol agents. We've
employed new technology to help our agents do their job -- from unmanned
aircraft, to ground censors, to infrared cameras. We've made better use of
physical structures to help our agents do their job. We've taken steps to
complete a 14-mile fence running along the San Diego border with Mexico.
Stopping people from crossing our borders illegally is only part of the
strategy. The other part of our strategy is enforcing our immigration laws.
Since 2001, we've increased funding for immigration enforcement by 35
percent. We've added nearly 1,000 new agents and criminal investigators to
help us find and return illegal immigrants. We've targeted violent criminal
gangs, whose members are here illegally.
Under a new program launched in February, our Immigration and Customs
Enforcement agents have arrested nearly 1,400 illegal immigrant gang
members. And this country owes them a debt of gratitude for working so hard
to protect our citizens. We're going after criminal organizations and
coyotes that traffic in human beings. These people are the worst of the
worst. They prey on innocent life. They take advantage of people who want to
embetter their own lives.
And we're working hard. In Arizona, we prosecuted more than 2,300 people for
smuggling drugs, guns and illegal immigrants across our borders. And I want
to thank the federal officers, as well as the folks from Arizona, both local
and state, who have made this kind of work possible.
As part of our enforcement efforts, we're working to send the illegal
immigrants we catch back to their home countries as soon as possible. It's
one thing to catch them, it's the next thing to get them back home. To make
progress -- to make our progress more effective, we're going to work with --
we'll continue to work with foreign governments to have their counsel
officers review cases and issue travel documents more quickly -- in other
words, to expedite the return.
These efforts are getting results. Since 2001, we've removed several million
illegal immigrants from the United States, including nearly 300,000 with
criminal records. Our Border Patrol and Immigration Enforcement officers are
really doing good work. Yet today we capture many more illegal immigrants
than we can send home, especially non-Mexicans. And one of the biggest
reasons for that is we don't have enough bed space in our detention
facilities. When there's no bed space available, non-Mexicans who are caught
entering our country illegally are given a slip that tells them to come back
for a court appearance. And guess what -- they don't come back.
And so this bill -- and by the way, as a result of that -- this process, the
lack of beds, the lack of detention facility, we return home only 30,000 of
the 160,000 non-Mexican illegal immigrants we caught coming through our
Southwest border. And the system is not fair to those who are working the
border. You got agents working hard to do their job, the job Americans
expect; 160,000 non-Mexican illegal immigrants were caught, yet only 30,000
of them went home.
And so the bill I sign today -- and I appreciate Congress' work on this
matter -- will help us expand our reach and effectiveness in two important
ways. First, the bill provides more than $2.3 billion for the Border Patrol
so we can keep more illegal immigrants from getting into this country. In
other words, we're expanding the number of agents in a rational, planned
way. This bill gives $139 million to improve our technology and intelligence
capabilities, including portable imaging machines, and cameras and sensors
and automated targeting systems that focus on high-risk travelers and goods.
In other words, we've increased the number of people, but we've given them
new technology so they can better do their job.
The bill also includes $82 million to improve and expand Border Patrol
stations and $70 million to install and improve fencing, lighting, vehicle
barriers and roads. What I'm saying is Congress did good work in helping us
build a smarter system, so we can say to the American people, we're doing
our job of securing our border.
Secondly, the bill provides $3.7 billion for immigration and customs
enforcement, so we can find and return the illegal immigrants who are here.
This bill will fund the hiring of 100 new immigration enforcement agents and
250 criminal investigators.
As a result of the bill I'm about to sign, we're going to add nearly 2,000
new beds to our detention facilities. That will bring the number of beds up
to nearly 20,000. This will allow us to hold more non-Mexican illegal
immigrants while we process them through a program we call "expedited
removal." Putting more of these non-Mexican illegal immigrants through
expedited removal is crucial to ending the problem of catch-and-release. As
Secretary Chertoff told the Senate earlier this morning, our goal is clear:
to return every single illegal entrant, with no exceptions. And this bill
gets us on the way to do that.
For Mexicans who cross into America illegally, we have a different strategy.
Now most of the 900,000 illegal immigrants from Mexico who are caught each
year are immediately escorted back across the border. The problem is, these
illegal immigrants are able to find another coyote, or human smuggler, and
they come right back in. One part of the solution is a program called
"interior repatriation," where we fly or bus Mexican illegal immigrants all
the way back to their hometowns. See, many of these folks are coming from
the interior of Mexico. And so the farther away from the border we send
them, the more difficult it will be for them to turn around and cross right
back into America. By returning Mexicans to their homes, far away from
desert crossings, we're helping to save lives. These efforts are going to
help us enforce our borders, and I want to thank you for your good work.
As we improve and expand our efforts to secure our borders, we must also
recognize that enforcement work -- that enforcement cannot work unless it is
part of a larger comprehensive immigration reform program. If an employer
has a job that no American is willing to take, we need to find a way to fill
that demand by matching willing employers with willing workers from foreign
countries on a temporary and legal basis. The best way to do that is through
a temporary worker program that gives those workers we need a legal, honest
way to come into our country and to return home. I'm going to work with
members of Congress to create a program that can provide for our economy's
labor needs, without harming American workers, without providing amnesty,
and that will improve our ability to control our borders.
You see, we got people sneaking into our country to work. They want to
provide for their families. Family values do not stop at the Rio Grande
River. People are coming to put food on the table. But because there is no
legal way for them to do so, through a temporary worker program, they're
putting pressure on our border. It makes sense to have a rational plan that
says, you can come and work on a temporary basis if an employer can't find
an American to do the job. It makes sense for the employer, it makes sense
for the worker, and it makes sense for those good people trying to enforce
our border. The fewer people trying to sneak in to work means it's more
likely we're going to catch drug smugglers and terrorists and gun runners.
A critical part of any temporary worker program is work site enforcement. To
deal with employers who violate our immigration law, this bill strengthens
our enforcement capabilities by adding new agents and doubling their
resources. We've got to crack down on employers who flout our laws. And we
will give honest employers the tools they need to spot fake documents and
ensure that their workers are respecting our laws. America is a country of
laws, and we're going to uphold our laws for the good of the citizens of
this country. (Applause.)
The bill I'm about to sign funds a lot of important programs. It helps
people do the job they've been called on to do, which is to protect the
American people. A key component of this bill is to make sure we enforce the
borders of the United States of America. And I want to thank the authors of
the bill, those who have worked hard to get this bill to my desk, for
putting forth a rational plan, a way to do our job.
We've got a lot of work to do in this country. There are enemies still out
there who want to hurt us. But this bill is a step toward all of us --
Republicans and Democrats -- being able to say to the American people, we're
coming together to do the best job we can possibly do to protect this
country.
Again, I want to thank the members for being here. Thanks for your good
work. May God bless you, and may God continue to bless our country.
(Applause.)
(The bill is signed.)
END 3:19 P.M. EDT
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Source: White House Press Office
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