http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metr ... rings.html

I don't think this was posted before, if it was sorry.

Witnesses announced for San Diego immigration hearing


By Allison Hoffman
ASSOCIATED PRESS

4:08 p.m. June 28, 2006

SAN DIEGO – Border Patrol agents and law enforcement officials will testify here next week on border security at the first in a series of congressional field hearings on immigration reform.
The House International Relations Committee will hold the hearing at a Border Patrol station in Imperial Beach, an oceanfront city sandwiched between San Diego's naval installations to the north and the Mexican border to the south.

Among the scheduled witnesses are Darryl Griffen, chief of the San Diego Border Patrol sector; T.J. Bonner, head of a union representing Border Patrol agents; and Andy Ramirez, a spokesman for Friends of the Border Patrol, a Covina, Calif.-based group that sends members to patrol the U.S. border with Mexico.

San Diego Sheriff Bill Kolender, who has publicly called for bolstering local law enforcement capacity in border areas, will testify alongside Sheriff Rick Flores of Laredo, Texas, who has made similar appeals. Flores has also publicly derided President Bush's plan to station National Guard troops along the border.

Gregory Kutz, the managing director for special investigations at the federal Government Accountability Office, and Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who was an immigration adviser to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, will also testify at the hearing.

The summer “road show” will continue with a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing outside Washington in mid-July on making English the nation's official language and how enforcement of immigration laws affects U.S. workers.

The House Government Reform Committee also plans a hearing the week of Aug. 14 in Arizona focusing on costs to local, state and federal government “caused by an unsecured border.”

Supporters of the Senate bill also plan hearings. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., has scheduled a hearing in his state July 5 looking at the need for more foreign guest workers.