Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2010

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of bipartisan legislation I introduced earlier today with my colleague Rep. Brian Bilbray of California: the Stop the Drop Houses Act.

Border States continue to pay a heavy price for the Federal Government's failure to secure the border and fix our broken immigration system. Arizona has been especially hard hit. More than half the illegal crossings across the U.S.-Mexico border happen in our State.

But this isn't just a crisis for communities along the border. This is a crisis in the interior--in places like Phoenix, where smugglers and Mexican cartels have set up vast networks of drop houses, which operate as way stations for criminal smuggling enterprises.

It has been estimated that there may be as many as 1,000 such drop houses in the Phoenix metropolitan area alone.

The crime associated with these drop houses is brutal and alarming. Phoenix now experiences upwards of 300 kidnappings a year.

I had the opportunity to visit a drop house in Phoenix yesterday, and I saw where smugglers had kept victims behind barred doors and windows while they extorted money for their release. I also visited another home in the same neighborhood, the site of a drug-cartel kidnapping, where smugglers had begun digging a grave for one of their captives, right there inside the house.

These violent thugs put innocent, law-abiding citizens at risk as well, when fights between rival cartels over smuggled cargo devolve into gunfire.

And these drop houses are everywhere. Living in an upscale neighborhood doesn't immunize you from their threat.

If there is anything more disturbing than these drop houses, it is the fact that we still have a loophole in Federal law that stops Federal authorities from using civil forfeiture to seize homes that are used as drop houses.

Under current law, civil forfeiture can be used to seize all kinds of other property used to facilitate smuggling crimes, such as vehicles or even airplanes. However, civil forfeiture cannot be used against the actual drop house, itself.

This just doesn't make sense.

That is why Rep. Bilbray and I have introduced bipartisan legislation to fix this. Our bill would close this loophole, and allow Federal prosecutors to use civil forfeiture to seize homes used as drop houses.

This is, of course, no substitute for the kind of comprehensive fix we need for border security and our broken immigration system. But this is one obvious, and vitally important step that Congress can take, right now, to make our communities safer.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass the Stop the Drop Houses Act.