Duncan Hunter

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. No. As the gentleman knows, the ANWR position is not in this bill.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Just one or two points, Mr. Speaker. Again in the detainee legislation, the House inserted protections for American uniform personnel and nonuniform personnel. The other point that was mentioned by the gentleman from New York was on probative value of evidence that might have been obtained under coercion. We all know that we have an exclusionary rule in this country domestically, and that means, as in Davis v. Mississippi, which is one of the threshold cases, the fact that the person did have his fingerprints on the threshold of the grandmother that he murdered, was picked out of an unconstitutionally developed lineup; and therefore we said, as a matter of disciplining our process, we would let people go even though we knew they had committed the crime. This is a different situation, Mr. Speaker. This is a situation where a person may have been interrogated and may have disclosed, for example, a cache of weapons with which he was going to use to destroy American soldiers on the battlefield, the idea that in our review when we determine whether we are going to free him and send him back, having seen some of the people that we freed at Guantanamo show back up on the battlefield intent on killing American soldiers, that we felt we could not go that far. We could still take the probative value, and if that interrogation developed that cache of weapons, we would look at the cache of weapons and say the person who maintained that was in fact a combatant and it is not fair to our soldiers to put him back where he can shoot at them again. Mr. Speaker, let me just say one last thing before my great colleague winds up on his side. The gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) is our champion on the Armed Services Committee for military education. That is an area in which he has more expertise than anybody else in this body. And I thought, as we move toward the conclusion of this bill, that it was only appropriate that as a gentleman who knows more history than the rest of us, and, in fact, I went over a book that we were going to get him and I found out he was already reading that book, I wanted to dedicate to him and to give to him a book from the committee signed by all the members of the committee, and the ones that have not come to the floor yet will have their opportunity. It is the ``Battle of Vicksburg.'' And for a gentleman who knows every battle that was fought in America and knows it very well, I thought that this would be an interesting tribute to us for a gentleman who really guides us, Democrats and Republicans, in this very important area of military education. So to the great gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), I hope you have good reading, and let me know the high points.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. How much time do we have left, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to thank the gentleman. I thought it would be appropriate for us also to thank this wonderful staff, this great bipartisan staff who put this product together. Let us thank them for what they did.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute so the gentleman from Georgia could make a presentation.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), the distinguished chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. That is my understanding.

Mr. HUNTER. That is my understanding.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to yield at this time to the gentleman who chairs the Projection Forces Subcommittee, the wonderful gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett), who lives on the Monocacy River and spends so much of his time and has spent a lot of time this last year working on the issues of shipbuilding and power projection of maritime forces and he has done a wonderful job. (Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, the Iraqi Freedom Fund is a fund that includes money for body armor and lots of other equipment. It is a fund that we supply each year. It is a revolving fund that we keep money in so that the war-fighting commanders can buy what they need immediately when they need it.

Mr. HUNTER. That is correct. As the gentleman knows, I have long supported efforts to protect American businesses and workers from illegal trade practices. Unfortunately, the conferees were unable to come to an agreement that would allow us to include this important language in the final conference report.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield for a unanimous consent request to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Everett), who has done such a great job as chairman of the Strategic Subcommittee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), the distinguished chairman of the Air, Land Subcommittee. (Mr. WELDON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HUNTER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, if you are one of the 2.5 million people who wear the uniform of the United States, you can know that you have got some great people working for you on this Armed Services Committee. I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) who just spoke, and also thank and commend a very distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), who works tirelessly to serve our people in uniform as well as they serve this country, the chairman of the Personnel Subcommittee.

Mr. HUNTER. I would be happy to join with my colleague from Georgia in a colloquy.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, a few years ago, in fact in 1994, we mandated the construction of a fence in San Diego California, a triple fence. And that fence, with a basic fence on the border, a Border Patrol road, then a secondary higher fence with an overhang, a second Border Patrol road and then a third fence were designed to stop the massive drug trade and the smuggling of narcotics and people across what was the most prolific smugglers' corridor in America, that between Tijuana and San Diego. At that time we had some 10 border murders a year. We had gangs that roamed that area that they called a ``no man's land'' to the point where Joseph Wambaugh wrote the best seller ``Lines and Shadows'' about the no man's land that existed between Tijuana and San Diego. We had some 300 drug trucks a month crashing that border and running up with cocaine for our children. We built that fence, Mr. Chairman, and in doing that we knocked down the murders from 10 a year to zero. We knocked down the border drive- throughs from 300 a month to zero. We knocked down the smuggling of both illegal aliens and narcotics to almost zero where that fence was. I might say that the great Border Patrol chief, Mr. Sylvester Reyes, stood in testimony, even adversely to his administration, and testified to the sufficiency of that fence. This proposal, Mr. Chairman, is 700 additional miles of fence, and it has a great humanitarian aspect. The first piece of this fence, 361 miles from Calexico to Douglas, Arizona, is the area through which most of the people come who have represented those 400 deaths a year by dehydration in the deserts of Arizona. If we had 400 college kids or high school kids or neighborhood kids a year dying in a lake in a city, we would immediately fence it. By fencing that area we are going to prevent those deaths. We cannot fence it by the next hot season, which will start in the end of May this coming year, but we have in this legislation directed interlocking cameras so we can see people when they come across the border while we are building the fence and we can respond. We can both deport them, and we can also save their lives, Mr. Chairman. The second piece that is mandatory here is the 15 miles on each side of Laredo. Across the river from Laredo is Nuevo Laredo where the drug lords reign, where they kill the local law enforcement officers within, some cases, a few hours of their taking office. If we can dry up that massive land smuggling with backpacks full of cocaine coming across that smugglers' jump-off point in Nuevo Laredo by fencing both sides with a double fence, 10 miles on each side of Nuevo Laredo, and we want to have it done and it is mandated by this bill by the end of the year this next year, we will have done great things for the people of America and the good citizens of Nuevo Laredo. This has a great humanitarian aspect to it, and we costed it out. It is roughly $2.2 billion. That is a fraction of what we spend each year to incarcerate the criminal aliens whom we currently have in massive numbers in our Federal penitentiaries and in our local jails. That is the essence of this. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce) who has been a major proponent for this fence.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to mention that Ronald Reagan closed down the border when our agent Kiki Camarena was murdered and the killer was not produced forthrightly by Mexican authorities. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman who is a co-author of this legislation and a tireless worker for the border fence in San Diego.

Mr. HUNTER

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh) for the purposes of conducting a colloquy with the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, let me just start off by saying that I think this is a somewhat dangerous thing that we are doing right now. We are responding to newspaper articles. We are talking about an issue that is not within the jurisdiction of this committee, and we are implying in this response that, if we have a positive vote that somehow there has been an inadequacy, somehow people have not been briefed about ongoing operations around the world, somehow there is a breakdown in our process. And I think that is precisely the wrong message to be sending. Mr. Speaker, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), who chairs the appropriate committee, the Intelligence Committee.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. The gentleman from Arkansas has just discussed the park for Santa Rosa Island and the idea that I wanted to use that great resource for Marines and soldiers and paralyzed veterans and allow them a chance to have recreational opportunities, and I guess I have to plead guilty. This came about when I was passing that island with a car full of Marines who had just returned from Iraq. They mentioned to me that that is one of the great resources on our coast. It is owned by a family which does charge a lot of money to people to hunt and fish. One of them said, you know, it would be great if they did not exterminate all the deer and elk on that island because the Park Service has a plan, and it is a written plan, and I have seen it, to exterminate with helicopters every single deer and elk on this beautiful island. The Marines continued, it would be great because that is such a neat place, and it is the kind of place where people in wheelchairs can access that great sport of hunting and fishing, if we could have some kind of a permission to continue to hunt and fish there but not pay the $10,000 that is presently charged but have that when the U.S. government takes it over for paralyzed veterans and disabled veterans and not exterminate every single deer and elk on that island. That was the intent of this gentleman in placing that provision in the bill, and I find it somewhat ironic that the people who profess to love the wildlife and love the flora and fauna and the environment seem to have no trouble with the National Park Service gunning down every single animal on that island in an extermination operation and not leaving any of that great resource for the people who defend this country. I thank the gentleman for the time.