...if we're going to stop the influence of El Chapo and his cartel and any other cartels, we not only have to get people like him extradited to the United States and put him in a supermax, as the chairman has suggested, as well as get their underlings also brought to the United States where they can be prosecuted, where we will know that we can chop the head off of this poisonous snake. (my emphasis)
...my whole message is that we've got to get this drug kingpin extradited to the United States so that he can be prosecuted and that he can be dealt with because he's a killer, he's one who has not only been involved in outright killing of individuals within the cartel's function, but he's a killer of American citizens and promoting their drug and their alcohol -- well, not alcohol, but their drug business here. He's killing children's lives with the sex trafficking and other things that this animal is doing.
...Get him here, get him here quickly so that we can try this animal in our courts and so that he gets his just due.
He also lambasts the government witnesses and Justice Department for not having made a formal extradition request.
I think it's absolutely unconscionable that this administration has not already asked for the extradition of El Chapo. I think they're not doing so, you all not doing so, ranges from just irresponsibility all the way up to incompetence. (my emphasis)
When Feeley tries to respond, Broun cuts him off:
FEELEY: We will be in discussions with the Mexicans regarding the extradition of El Chapo Guzman. I assure you of that. Those discussions may not produce the immediate transfer of him for the following reasons. He has also committed the same atrocities on the Mexican people and the Mexican --
REP. BROUN: ...I'm going to have to cut you off because my time is limited. I have one minute left.
What did Broun have to add in his last minute? More of the same:
I'm an addictionologist. I treat people that have been affected by this animal. We've got to get him here and try him and have -- go through the due process. But once that due process occurs, let's get him here....Get him here, get him here quickly so that we can try this animal in our courts and so that he gets his just due.
I don't think a Congressman who repeatedly refers to another person, even one charged with crimes, as "an animal" belongs in Congress or should represent Congress at televised hearings the whole world might be watching. It's people like Broun who tarnish the image of the U.S. abroad. He sounds like a nutcase.
As to his sex-trafficking claims: There is not a single indictment against Chapo Guzman for sex-trafficking, here or in Mexico. Broun apparently got his cartels mixed up. Two witnesses tried to set him straight:
Feeley: Of the major trafficking groups, this is the cartel that most exclusively focuses on drug trafficking as opposed to expanding into other areas such as sex trafficking. The ones most associated with that tend to be the Zetas who operate in and fight for territory all throughout Mexico.
Another witness says:
The Federation or the Sinaloa cartel is perhaps the most developed and most organized of all of the cartels. And as I said earlier, it sticks very closely to what it does best, and that's moving drugs. And it's not the most shockingly violent, it's not the one that gets involved in human trafficking. It is depraved and it will use violence and intimidation when it has to.
As for killing American citizens, witness Bersin said:
BERSIN: ....there are two types of spillover violence, one that would involve having Mexican organized criminals come over into the United States and actually shoot up the town. With an exception, quite a while ago now, we have not seen that kind of spillover violence.
REP. RICHMOND: So the cartels, it's not a norm then for the cartels to either have direct involvement or to order violence in our communities, I guess is --
MR. BERSIN: That's correct, Congressman. In fact, the crime records on the U.S.-Mexican border measured by FBI statistics are the lowest that they've been, as Mr. O'Rourke will tell you.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee's odd suggestion: Let's try Chapo in the U.S. for the crimes he committed in Mexico and sentence him here for them. Mexico shouldn't mind.
One Congressman asked a valid question:
REP. O'ROURKE:....apart from bringing him to justice, apart from the symbolic value that Mr. Wilson talked about...I really want to know what, if anything, is going to change.
And just by way of context -- and my colleague Mr. Richmond talked about this earlier -- you know, we've had a 40-year war on drugs, we had Crockett and Tubbs battling the, you know, cartels and drugs coming in from the Caribbean. We mentioned Pablo Escobar and Colombia. I think we spent $8 billion on Plan Colombia and they were cultivating and shipping more cocaine at the end of that than at the beginning of the $8 billion. We suppressed that to some degr
