Good morning, Thank you Chairman Cueller and Ranking Member Miller for your interest in Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2. The film, as you just saw, seeks to provide a reality check on what is going on in Arizona, featuring footage of both alien and drug-smuggling. The film can be found on the Center for Immigration Studies website at www.cis.org. The film was released nearly a week ago, and as of this morning sits at over 115,000 views on YouTube.

I began this series of mini-documentaries over a year ago, after becoming increasingly alarmed at a growing silence about the southwest border, and particularly Arizona. The increasing brazenness of drug cartels and gang members to commit violent crimes towards Americans was raising the bar on national security and public safety issues not just for Arizona, but across the nation.

I was especially concerned—based on my work on the September 11 Commission-- about the interest of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Al Qaeda in seeking terrorist travel support from alien and drug smugglers for anonymous entry of their operatives along the southwest and northern border. There were documented cases of both terror organizations pursuing this type of travel strategy, an issue that I had testified to in prior years before Congress.

Yet in Washington we were told of a “no new fencing” policy; proposed cuts to the Border Patrol; disinterest in prosecuting illegal alien entries; and no replacement program for the failed Secure Border Initiative. There was also a much ignored request by Arizona’s new Governor, Jan Brewer, to deploy National Guard, despite the success that over 5,000 National Guard had provided to an overwhelmed Border Patrol in 2006 in western Arizona’s Yuma Sector, helping that sector gain operational control and reduce apprehensions by over 94 percent in just two years.

During this same period, I began receiving anonymous emails with hidden camera footage from the southwest border. Over time, this footage captured hundreds of illegal aliens crossing federal lands over and into Arizona. The government was telling us that illegal alien apprehension numbers were down, but how did anyone know the true numbers when so much activity seemed to be happening on federal land where there was little to no federal law enforcement activity, but only private citizen hidden cameras? How could it be that the federal lands seemed less protected by federal law enforcement than private property?

What seemed strange was that the Department of Interior and Department of Agriculture, which own about one-third of Arizona combined, have known the devastating effect of illegal alien activity on its land for years. I learned this through a series of difficult, and often unanswered, FOIA requests. Yet I am told again and again of the heavy struggles the Border Patrol has had in gaining timely access to these lands, exacerbating the environmental and public safety issues while encouraging alien and drug smugglers to use them as a playground for travel and waste.

I encourage Congress to do what it can to correct federal law enforcement access to federal lands. If nothing else but that comes from this mini-documentary, its making will have been well worthwhile.

Thank you.