Border patrol’s job is ‘not to stop illegals’!

August 24, 2007 - A congressman who has been an outspoken critic of illegal immigration called today for the removal of the Border Patrol's chief in Laredo, Texas.

Colorado Republican and long-shot presidential candidate Tom Tancredo said Carlos X. Carrillo's recent remarks about the role of the agency make him unfit for the job.

Carrillo spoke Aug. 15 in Laredo, a border community intimately connected by commerce and family with Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.

At a town-hall meeting, Carrillo said, "The Border Patrol's job is not to stop illegal immigrants. The Border Patrol's job is not to stop narcotics. The Border Patrol's mission is not to stop criminals. The Border Patrol's mission is to stop terrorists and terrorist weapons from entering this country."

Tancredo says those remarks are "diametrically opposed to what the Border Patrol is supposed to do."

The head of the Border Patrol defended Carrillo in a statement issued late Friday, saying the Laredo chief should have communicated the agency's mission in a clearer manner, but that his comments were being taken out of context.