Queen Sheila once again on the wrong side of an issue, supporting illegal immigrants.
Posted on 08/17/2006 11:53:33 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
HOUSTON, August 17, 2006 – The amateur video footage is shaky but there is no mistaking the limp bodies lying alongside a Nuevo Laredo gutter and the peppering sound of rapid gunfire in the back-ground.
The video documenting a recent gunfight between Mexican law enforcement and drug cartels was shown at the start of a subcommittee hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday. The hearing was intended to investigate criminal activity and violence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Like the video, the hearing included stories of gruesome violence committed along the border and by illegal immigrants. At times the tone turned dramatic as participants used the forum to make their points on the heated immigration issue.
“This is what’s happening in our communities,” U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, chairman of the Subcommittee on Investigations, said of the video. “This is what’s bleeding over into the United States.”
Webb County Sheriff Rick Flores narrated the video and described the violence as being largely con-tained to the other side of the border.
But his department has seized $17 million worth of narcotics during his 18 months in office and has less powerful weapons than the drug cartel. He suggested he worries for his safety.
“I’ve got a wife and two kids,” he said. “You think those guys want my head on a plate?”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry is asking the Legislature to approve sending $100 million to the border to in-crease security where the federal government has not fulfilled its duties, said Steve McCraw, Director of Homeland Security for Perry’s office.
“The one recommendation you’ll get from Texas is simply, leverage locally,” he said.
State officials told the committee of some ways they pay for illegal immigration.
In fiscal year 2005, the state spent an estimated $132 million housing illegal immigrants in its prisons, said John Moriarty, inspector general of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Members of the committee used the hearing as a chance to push for their version of immigration bills that are stalled in Congress. The House and Senate have each passed bills but have not negotiated a final version.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said the hearing was part of a “road show” of similar hear-ings sponsored by House Republican leadership to provoke strong feelings of immigration across the country without finding solutions.
Jackson Lee said she favors the Senate immigration bill, which would send money to border law en-forcement but – unlike the House version — would not make it a felony to be in the United States illegally.
The hearings have been more show than substance since most lawmakers already agreed that local agencies need more money, Jackson Lee said.
“We are in bipartisan agreement that we want to fund the needs of those first responders on the border that are using their resources,” she said.
McCaul favors the stricter, House bill. He said the hearings were full of useful testimony.
Some officials who testified said they were concerned about a proposal in Congress to withhold federal funding from local governments who did not help pursue illegal immigrants. If implemented, officers would spend their time apprehending immigrants rather than pursuing perpetrators of other crimes, they said.
“It would be a disservice to those folks who are needing emergency response or just a general police presence in the community,” said Adrian Garcia, Houston city councilman and former police officer.
In his time in law enforcement, Garcia found American citizens to be suspects of crimes more often than were illegal immigrants, he said.
But sometimes illegal immigrants get away with murder, Carrie Ruiz told the committee. The Houston woman said her 17-year-old daughter, Felicia, was murdered in 1999 by a Venezuelan man who was in the United States illegally.
The man and others ambushed Felicia Ruiz, slit her throat, beat her and stabbed her 39 times, Carrie Ruiz said. They had wanted her to join a gang and she refused. They retaliated after she had identified another gang member, Ruiz said.
Police questioned and released the man. He went to Miami, where his father picked him up in a corpo-rate plane and flew him to Venezuela where he now lives, Ruiz said.
Extradition laws prevented him from returning to the United States to be tried, she said.
“What about the ones that don’t get jobs?” Ruiz said, referring to illegal immigrants. “Not all of them come over here to get a good job and support their families.”
During the hearing, protesters chanted in front of the civil courthouse, their signs barely visible from the 17th floor window outside the hearing room.
They spilled down the front steps, some chanting “Si Se Puede,” opposing stricter laws against immi-grants. Others advocating for stricter laws held signs saying “No Amnesty.”
Mary Crider, who owns a home-remodeling company near Galveston, said she was upset by marches earlier this year in which she thought immigrants were asking for special favors despite their illegal status. She wants tax money to go toward helping Americans of all ethnicities rather than illegal immi-grants, she said.
“It’s not about the marching; it’s about what they are marching for,” she said. “They want more rights than our own citizens.”
epierson@link.freedom.com
Border Ping!
Queen Sheila once again on the wrong side of an issue, supporting illegal immigrants.
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