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