Texas 2011 - 82nd Regular

Texas Senate Bill SCR36 Compare Versions

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1	1	By: Williams, et al. S.C.R. No. 36
2	2	(In the Senate - Filed March 24, 2011; March 28, 2011, read
3	3	first time and referred to Committee on Transportation and Homeland
4	4	Security; April 12, 2011, reported favorably by the following
5	5	vote: Yeas 7, Nays 0; April 12, 2011, sent to printer.)
6	6
7	7
8	8	SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION
9	9	WHEREAS, The State of Texas is charged with protecting more
10	10	than 1,200 miles of land and some 367 miles of coastline along the
11	11	Mexican border, a job that has become increasingly difficult; and
12	12	WHEREAS, On September 25, 2006, Officer Rodney Johnson of the
13	13	Houston Police Department was fatally shot during a routine traffic
14	14	stop in Houston by a criminal illegal immigrant who had been
15	15	previously deported and had once again entered the country; and
16	16	WHEREAS, Two years later, on November 22, 2008, two employees
17	17	from the Texas Tech Medical School were gunned down in Juarez,
18	18	Mexico, while participating in a funeral procession for a family
19	19	member; less than a year after that, bullets from a gun battle in
20	20	Matamoros, Mexico, grazed a campus building at The University of
21	21	Texas at Brownsville, and on June 29, 2010, stray bullets from a
22	22	deadly gun battle in Juarez struck the El Paso City Hall; and
23	23	WHEREAS, The Texas-Mexico border was especially violent in
24	24	late summer 2010; on August 21, a portion of U.S. Highway 85 had to
25	25	be shut down when gunfire from Juarez reached The University of
26	26	Texas at El Paso and at least one bullet pierced Bell Hall; then, on
27	27	the 11th of September, Mexican drug cartel members brazenly shot at
28	28	patrolling United States law enforcement officers, and on the 30th
29	29	of that month, members of a Mexican cartel viciously murdered David
30	30	Michael Hartley, who was skiing on Falcon Lake with his wife; and
31	31	WHEREAS, Already, 2011 is shaping up to see more of the same;
32	32	on January 14, an armed man from the Mexican side of the border
33	33	fired a high-powered rifle at road workers in Hudspeth County, and
34	34	later that month, on January 26, Nancy Shuman Davis, an American
35	35	missionary, was driving with her husband about 60 miles south of the
36	36	border when she was shot and killed by gunmen; in February, the
37	37	United States lost an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent,
38	38	Jaime Zapata, who was assigned to the Immigration and Customs
39	39	Enforcement attache office in Mexico City; he and another
40	40	Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, who was injured, were
41	41	attacked by unknown assailants while the agents were driving
42	42	between Monterrey and Mexico City; and
43	43	WHEREAS, All of these events, as well as others that have not
44	44	been cited or are not yet known, exemplify the inadequacy of federal
45	45	border security efforts; the State of Texas has attempted to
46	46	address the problem by adding 172 commissioned law enforcement
47	47	officers to the border, purchasing five state-of-the-art
48	48	helicopters, conducting border security surge operations, and
49	49	paying more than $79 million for overtime, training, equipment, and
50	50	technology for local law enforcement officers in just the last four
51	51	years; and
52	52	WHEREAS, Since 2006, law enforcement agencies working
53	53	together in Texas have seized more than $6.8 billion in illegal
54	54	drugs and more than $128 million in cash, along with over 2,600
55	55	stolen firearms and weapons and approximately 2,230 stolen
56	56	vehicles, all related to drug and human trafficking; and
57	57	WHEREAS, Texas has repeatedly asked the federal government to
58	58	send more border security resources to this state, requesting
59	59	specifically an increase in manpower of 3,000 border patrol agents
60	60	and the deployment of 1,000 Title 32 National Guard troops and at
61	61	least one Texas-based and dedicated unmanned aircraft like those
62	62	being used in North Dakota and Arizona; and
63	63	WHEREAS, At an average salary of $60,000 a year, the cost of
64	64	tripling the number of border patrol agents along our border with
65	65	Mexico would cost the federal government less than $2.5 billion,
66	66	while the estimated costs of illegal immigration exceed that amount
67	67	in Texas alone; and
68	68	WHEREAS, Texas taxpayers have spent billions compensating
69	69	for the lack of federal resources provided to the state; in just one
70	70	example, Texas prisons house nearly 12,000 violent offenders that
71	71	claim foreign citizenship, and the state bears the entire cost of
72	72	housing and prosecuting those offenders; at an average cost of $47
73	73	per day, that is over $200 million per year that the federal
74	74	government's failure to secure our border is costing Texans; at the
75	75	very least, the federal government should be responsible for the
76	76	cost of housing illegal immigrants who have been convicted of
77	77	committing a crime in the State of Texas and the state should be
78	78	reimbursed for its recent expenses in this regard; and
79	79	WHEREAS, Moreover, despite Texas' repeated requests that the
80	80	federal government cease and desist transferring illegal aliens
81	81	from other parts of the country to southwest Texas, the federal
82	82	government continues to do so as part of the federal Alien Transfer
83	83	and Exit Program; and
84	84	WHEREAS, Worse yet, Immigration and Customs Enforcement
85	85	director John Morton released a memo stating that the agency did not
86	86	have enough resources to deport all apprehended illegal aliens and
87	87	instructed Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees to
88	88	prioritize the apprehension and removal of aliens, effectively
89	89	giving many of them a free pass and handicapping local law
90	90	enforcement; and
91	91	WHEREAS, The inability of Washington to develop some form of
92	92	comprehensive immigration reform that might address this border
93	93	security problem puts an unfair and unreasonable burden on the
94	94	entire state, but in particular on Texas border communities, which
95	95	already struggle to keep their streets and neighborhoods safe from
96	96	spillover gang violence; and
97	97	WHEREAS, The federal government imposes immigration laws on
98	98	our state while withholding both the funding and the manpower
99	99	necessary to effectively enforce those laws, and this broken system
100	100	has punished Texas taxpayers for far too long; now, therefore, be it
101	101	RESOLVED, That the 82nd Legislature of the State of Texas
102	102	hereby urge the members of the Texas congressional delegation to
103	103	provide to the legislature a cost analysis of the exact funding
104	104	necessary for full enforcement of all immigration laws in Texas and
105	105	to immediately report to the legislature as to the status of that
106	106	funding; and, be it further
107	107	RESOLVED, That the lieutenant governor of Texas and the
108	108	speaker of the Texas House of Representatives send a delegation of
109	109	members from both chambers to meet with members of Congress and
110	110	members of the executive branch to discuss the ongoing border
111	111	security crisis; and, be it further
112	112	RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official
113	113	copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to
114	114	the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House of
115	115	Representatives of the United States Congress, and to all the
116	116	members of the Texas delegation to Congress with the request that
117	117	this resolution be entered in the Congressional Record as a
118	118	memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.
119	119	* * * * *