Mr. POE of Texas. Thank you, Judge Carter.

The reason Williamson County doesn't have any criminals in it is you sent them all to the Texas State penitentiary when you were judge. But I think this event that has occurred should tell us a lot of things. One, that the country of Iran is so bold they believe that they can commit a crime of terror on the soil of the United States and get away with it, that the United States wouldn't do anything, or there wouldn't be any consequences, whatever. But the government, and I believe the Government of Iran was in the middle of this, was so arrogant to hurt and kill Americans that they were willing to do this on our homeland.

I think that we have the responsibility to treat this just like it had actually occurred, had they carried out the assault on the Embassy here, killed the Ambassador at a restaurant, apparently, killed the Israeli Ambassador, killed the two Ambassadors of the same countries in Argentina, which was discussed. We should be very concerned about that and not give it a pass because our law enforcement did a good job.

But also, they're willing to recruit the Zeta cartel to bring explosives into the United States. I wonder whether this is the first time they thought they were dealing with the Zeta cartels. We don't know. But the Zetas, to me, are the worst of the worst drug cartels. It reminds me of the old show on television back years ago, ``Paladin,'' where his business card read ``Have gun--will travel.'' And that's what the Zetas are. They've got guns, and they'll travel anywhere to assassinate people to make a little money.

So you've got Iran on one side of the world and the drug cartels in Mexico, two criminal enterprises working together--one for political reasons, one for money reasons--to cause harm to the United States.

Now, that brings us to a question of the real problem, which is the border. The U.S. border with Mexico and its porousness is a national security issue. It is not an immigration issue. That is a completely different issue. It's a border security, national security issue.

Last year, from the, I believe the same report that you have provided, there were 663 individuals from special interest countries that were captured by our law enforcement. Now, special interest countries are countries where terror organizations originate--Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan. That's where these 663 people were from that were captured by our law enforcement trying to come into the United States. And they weren't coming in here looking for work that Americans won't do. They were coming over here for mischief reasons. And that's because the border is open. The world knows if you can get to Mexico, you can get to the United States. And that was the plan in this bold endeavor to commit terror in the United States.

Recently, we did a border forum in Brownsville where we had primarily law enforcement and people who lived on the border testified about violence on the border. There are some places on the border that aren't violent on the United States side. But there are other places that are. It's not all peaceful, and it's not all violent. It depends on the area of the border.

One of the cattlemen that is a ranger for the Cattlemen's Association testified that he was so concerned about cross-border travel and crime coming into the United States on ranches and nothing was being done about the crime that was being committed on these ranches by people crossing into the United States, primarily drug cartels, that the cattlemen, since they don't feel protected, may end up taking the law into their own hands. And we don't want to get into that situation.

You mentioned trafficking, human trafficking. That's another tremendous problem that the United States needs to be aware of, that young people, young women and girls from all over the world are being smuggled to Mexico, then smuggled into the United States, and then trafficked throughout the United States for sexual crimes. And it's an awful, awful scourge, but they cross the border because it's open in so many places.

In our Judiciary Committee a couple weeks ago, we had testimony that the number one threat to national security of the United States is not al Qaeda but the criminal drug cartels that operate in Mexico. The number one national security threat is the criminal drug cartels that operate in Mexico. That should give us, really, a warning that we really do have a tremendous crisis on our hands, because those people are at war not only with Mexico, but they're at war with the United States.

Lastly, I wanted to point out that there are several things that are being done, but the problem still exists--people are crossing into the United States. Border Patrol is doing the best they can. Of course, local law enforcement, the sheriffs, are doing as good a job as they can, and they mentioned the problem that you have talked about, about how the drug cartels want to infiltrate this side of the border and actually control regions. It's pretty simple what they do. They own land on one side of the Rio Grande River in Mexico, and they want to buy or steal or confiscate land on the Texas side of the Rio Grande River. That way they can move their drugs and smuggling operation from one land they own to another land they own across the river.

And when we get in that situation where the drug cartels are owning land on both sides of the border, we've got ourselves a real problem. And it's not just drugs; it's this problem right here. It seems to me that we need more people to protect the security of the United States. That's one of the things the Federal Government is actually supposed to do is to protect us.

And one piece of legislation I've offered is to put the National Guard on the border, not behind the border, but on the border, 10,000 troops, at the request of the Governors, supervised by the Governors, paid by the Federal Government, but put them on the border. Right now our policy seems to be, [Page: H6845] since we can't have enough people on the border, we have them behind the border, and we try to catch them if you can, that's people coming into the United States, everybody, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And once we catch them, they become our problem, our financial problem, and then we have to deal with them and try to send as many as we can back.

If we have the National Guard on the border, they're not going to cross into the United States if we have that presence. And I think it's come to that, where we actually need to do that and talk about the role of the Federal Government is national security.

With that, I thank my friend for yielding.