Thread: Texas Democrat to GOP Speaker: Ohio towns are more violent t

Texas Democrat to GOP Speaker: Ohio towns are more violent than border

By Mike Lillis - 05/09/11 01:36 PM ET


A border-state Democrat on Monday accused House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) of exaggerating the violence at the Mexican frontier in order to kill immigration-reform efforts.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said America's border towns are among the safest in the country, and noted that violent crime in Ohio is far worse than that in the largest cities abutting Mexico. He called on Boehner to fix his home-state problems before criticizing those along the southern border.

"Speaker Boehner should focus on controlling the level of violence in his own state before tarnishing the image of border communities that remain among the safest places to live in America," Reyes, who represents Texas' western-most border district, said in a statement.

The comment comes amid an escalation of violent crime in Mexico, fueled largely by the powerful cartels catering to America's substantial appetite for illegal drugs. The drug battles have killed more than 30,000 Mexicans since 2006. Some of the crime has spilled into the U.S., prompting many lawmakers on Capitol Hill to urge the White House to take additional steps to seal the border.

President Obama is scheduled to speak Tuesday on immigration reform in El Paso, Texas, which sits in Reyes’ district.

Boehner's office last week fired a warning shot on the thorny topic, saying Republicans will oppose any efforts to reform the nation's immigration laws before the violence at the border declines.

“Our first priority must be ending the violence at the border," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told Roll Call last Tuesday. "We really can’t deal with other issues until it is secure."

Yet Reyes noted that the crime rate in Ohio cities is much higher than that in border towns.

Dayton, Ohio, for instance, suffered 39 homicides in 2009 and another 35 in 2010 – more than the number in the Texas-border cities of El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville and McAllen combined, Reyes said, citing local law enforcement statistics.

"As his office asserts that Congress cannot consider reforming our broken immigration system until border violence is under control, the fact remains that the six largest cities in Ohio all have higher rates of violence and crime than every major city along the U.S.-Mexico border," Reyes said.

The Texas Democrat said he's hopeful that Obama's high-profile address "will help expose Republicans' distorted rhetoric on border violence, and renew the push for much-needed reforms to our immigration system that are long overdue."

Boehner's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

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This is your brain on Socialism.

I bet Silvestre Reyes voted for Lopez Obrador in the last election.

Dixie