Congressional hearing focuses on border security

CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
Bloomberg Businessweek
September 20, 2011

Four months after President Barack Obama went to the other end of the Texas-Mexico border to tally achievements in border security and call for comprehensive immigration reform, a Republican congressman said the border remains unsafe and convened a hearing Monday in this border city to show it.

“I do believe that the concept out of Washington that the border is as secure as it has ever been is not actually factual,” said U.S. Rep. Ted Poe, a Texas Republican. “The federal government is probably doing more than it has in recent years but the border … is still not secure.”

Poe, a member of the House Judiciary committee’s subcommittee on immigration policy and enforcement, said from the start that he didn’t want to combine border security and immigration. But since a secure border is the prerequisite many Republicans have set for immigration reform and the goalpost Obama accused Republicans of moving during his May speech in El Paso, immigration remained the unspoken presence at the hearing on the campus of the University of Texas-Brownsville.

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This article was posted: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 10:35 am

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