>> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
My name is Kevin W. Oakes.
I am the Chief of the Rio Grande Valley Sector
and I'm here today to proudly introduce
the Commissioner of the United States Customs and Border Protection, Gil Kerlikowske.
Commissioner.
>> Good. Thank you, Kevin.
>> Thank you, sir.
>> Thanks very much.
Well, I've got to do my best not to let all my notes blow off and into the river.
But one, thank you very much for being here, particularly the fact that we need your help.
We need the help of the media on this campaign.
You know, today we chose this location
because we want to highlight the dangers of trying to get across,
not only this river,
but as you can see from some of our other posters, getting across the desert.
The number of lives that have been lost has been significant.
From October through June of this year, in fact this river has claimed 34 lives.
And those deaths are in addition to the lives that have been lost in the desert,
in vehicle crashes and in ways that we couldn't actually determine.
And so far this fiscal year we've had 226 deaths.
Well, I'm here today because we want to stop those deaths.
We want to warn people of the dangers and frankly, we can't do this without your help.
And we want to tell them that if you cross the border illegally,
no matter what your age is, you're not going to get legal papers.
There is no "permiso". There is no permission to stay.
The dramatic rise that we have seen in the number of unaccompanied immigrant children
is something that you all very familiar with already.
And they are arriving at our Southwest borders in unprecedented numbers
and it truly is a humanitarian crisis.
And three quarters of these children are from Central America
and they arrive hungry and they're thirsty and they're exhausted and they're scared.
The Department of Homeland Security has mobilized unprecedented resources
to address this situation that's consistent with our laws
and it's consistent with our values as Americans.
CBP has worked closely with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
We have several FEMA representatives here,
but we also have representatives of FEMA Corps,
young people, either in college or recently having graduated from college
that are all down here from all parts of the country to be a help to us.
So FEMA's coordinating the efforts of the overall emergency response.
Others include the White House, the Department of Homeland Security
and Secretary Johnson has made a number of trips to this area.
The Department of Defense, the Department of Justice,
the Department of State and the Department of Health and Human Services.
And together we're processing the unaccompanied children
and the families through this system as quickly as we can.
We've located additional facilities to house and process the children,
places like Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
This has placed a lot of stress on the employees of CBP.
Secretary Johnson this week announced the immediate deployment
of 150 additional border patrol agents to the Rio Grande Valley
and the added personnel are going to be used
to not only disrupting transnational criminal organizations,
but also to help in the processing and the detention efforts.
This is how, by the way,
on top of the 115 additional border patrol agents that had been deployed earlier.
Well, I've seen these employees and this is my third trip down here, just to McAllen.
But I visited a number of other stations along the RGV.
I've seen them respond to these difficulties with professionalism, but also with compassion.
And they've made heroic efforts to help these kids.
They've rescued kids, they care for them
and they are committed to taking care of them
in a way that's most humane and a way that's most compassionate.
Frankly, it's a way that comes from their heart.
I couldn't be more proud of the work of the men and women of Customs and Border Protection.
And right now the Border Patrol, as to how they have risen to the challenge.
Our Air and Marine Unit, which is represented here, has done an outstanding job also.
So really, this is a whole of DHS approach, as we'd say inside the Beltway.
And it's really a whole of government approach.
But we have to stem the flow.
We have to stem the flow.
In addition to dealing with the immediate situation of our border,
we have to stop the illegal migration that is causing so many difficulties,
placing so many people in dangerous positions.
The State Department and the White House are working with senior government officials
in the countries in which most of these young people are coming from.
And you know them well: Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
And they hope to address the conditions in Central America,
which are spurring the action of many of these young people to flee:
poverty, education and safety and security.
And in addition, the Department of Justice has truly stepped up to the plate on this.
They've committed to having more immigration judges
help in expediting the immigration hearings.
Well, the message is very clear from the Administration
and the message could not have been made more clear by the President the other day.
If you cross illegally into the United States,
you're not eligible to earn a path to citizenship.
You will not be eligible under the Comprehensive Immigration Legislation
that is currently before the Congress.
You're not eligible for a deferred action for childhood arrivals
or as we know it, as it's called "DACA".
You will not get papers to allow you stay
and you are putting yourself and your children in grave danger.
What are those dangers?
Well, let me tell you a little bit about those.
And that's the reason that we've asked you to help with this campaign.
And we're introducing further steps, now today, in communicating to the children
but also to their families who are considering making this very dangerous journey.
And the message is clear.
First of all, these children are our future.
Children are the future of these countries
that we've been talking about and they have to be protected.
That's something that is absolutely universal.
They've developed, CBP has developed a multimedia public awareness campaign
regarding the dangers of the journey to the United States.
And the fact that no legal papers or path to citizenship
awaits anyone who has crossed illegally.
The dangers of course are real, too, because of the desolate areas.
As we've seen unprecedented numbers of Border Patrol agents,
technology and assistance along our entire Southwest border,
we've also seen that people attempt to enter the country
through more desolate and frankly, more dangerous areas.
But they're also subject to the transnational organized criminals: smugglers.
Oftentimes the smugglers are juveniles,
are young people themselves because they feel they won't be prosecuted as aggressively.
In fact, right now nothing could father from the truth.
As you know from Secretary Johnson and the President,
in announcing additional resources to interact and to interdict with these smuggling organizations.
But the people that are most impacted by these smuggling groups
of course are the migrants themselves.
They often held for what they thought would have been
the amount of money that they were paying to come across into the country, and then they're held.
They're held illegally, they're held essentially as kidnap victims for more money,
either from themselves or from their family members.
Now let me tell you a startling statistic also.
More female migrants are being raped during this journey to the United States border.
So far in this fiscal year, 2014, 46 girls and women
who have arrived in this sector reported being raped while traveling to the border.
That is a greater number than all of last year.
And that's just in the Southwest section of the border.
Now, I happen to know from having been a police chief and a police officer for 40 years,
that sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes.
So you can only imagine if we've had 46
people report these awful crimes to our Border Patrol agents,
how many more crimes were not reported.
But I also have to tell you that I couldn't again be more proud of the Border Patrol
and the fact that in many ways they've gained trust from these communities
and these people that they serve.
Otherwise I'm not so sure that 46 women and girls
would have been eager or would have been going forward to in fact
report these crimes of such a nature to the Border Patrol.
But they look to these Border Patrol agents for help.
When they want to avoid checkpoints,
young people oftentimes get on what we all is "the Beast", "la Bestia".
The train.
And we know from the statistics the number of young people that have been hurt or injured
or in fact even killed from taking that dangerous route forward.
When these children arrive they're not only malnourished as I said,
they're also oftentimes have a disease,
have something that needs to be treated by a physician.
The Centers for Disease Control, the public health service
that is represented and the Coast Guard Corpsmen
that are all here are tremendously helpful in helping us to deal with this disease issue.
Well, this campaign message is important.
It is truly multimedia.
And it's really three parts: the journey's dangerous.
Children will not get legal papers if they make it.
And these children need to be protected because they are our future.
The campaign has print materials.
It includes billboards, posters, signage.
There we paid advertising in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico.
And all materials are going to be shared with stakeholder partners for distribution.
The print ad campaigns begin on July 7th.
233 billboards, bus signage, bus shelters,
road overhead signage in Central America and additional print signage in Mexico.
Well, we know from these messages things like,
I thought it would be easy for my son to get his papers in the United States.
But it isn't true.
It's a very clear, simple and direct message.
And the work that was done to put these messages together took some time.
We needed the cooperation of those other countries.
We needed the cooperation and help from the State Department.
We needed to make sure that these messages are appropriate,
that they're effective and that they've been tested.
And we have Hyme Ruiz, who is over here.
We should invite you up here.
Hyme Ruiz works for CBP.
He is well-known for working with communities,
the Hispanic community to really get this message across.
He'll be available, of course, for interviews and for further discussion.
He was absolutely instrumental in helping put together this entire program
and now the important part of this is,
that after he finishes interviewing and talking with you,
we put him on a plane all over the country to go talk to Spanish media outlets.
But where are they?
Well, New York and Connecticut and others.
Because we want this same message about the dangers of the journey
to also resonate with people living here in this country,
who often communicate with relatives in those,
predominantly in those three Central American countries.
You know, each piece was professionally developed.
It's unique and special to the three countries that I mentioned.
And at the same time that we're reaching out to other stakeholders,
we want to encourage as many people to spread the message as possible.
I don't think there's been any greater partner in some of these issues
than the Spanish language media.
They feel compelled and they feel a responsibility to make sure that
the people that view and listen to their messages
also will hear the messages about danger and hear the message that,
and the fact that there is no legal pathway to citizenship.
And we'll be asking them after September,
which is when this paid media program runs through,
we'll be asking them to continue on.
But we want to see this work and we want to see it in force.
But frankly, we can't do it without your help and your cooperation.
These are hard-hitting messages.
They're clear and we have, as I said, the domestic outreach within the United States
where Hyme will lead this effort but also travel internationally to help us.
Well, I think I've said enough about this program and I'm also happy to take a few questions.
Thank you all very much for being here.