Testimony Before the Texas Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security and Committee on International Relations and Trade
This comes to you from The Heritage Foundation and Matt Mayer's testimony, which contains Constitutional support for the authority of state and local governments to act regardless of acquiescence by the federal government.
July 19, 2008
Matt A. Mayer
(Testimony begins)
Chairs Carona and Lucio, Vice-Chairs Watson and Patrick, and Committee Members, thank you for this opportunity to come before you to share my thoughts and answer your questions as best I can.

• Study and make recommendations to stem the tide of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and human smuggling, and to reduce the criminal activities with the border region;
• Evaluate the state's homeland security efforts and the state's recent $140 million investment in law enforcement to help secure the border, study and make recommendations to deter transnational drug-related gang violence and crime, including the use of injunctions and any possible improvements to Chapter 125 of the Civil Practices and Remedies Code, relating to membership in street gangs; and
• Study and make recommendations for the creation of a tamper-proof driver's license or photo ID that complies with the federal Real ID Act, including the implementation of the Secure Enhanced Drivers' License Program (SB 11, 80th Legislative) by the Department of Public Safety and to issue recommendations for improving and expanding the pilot program.

Immigration law is mostly covered in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which amended the INA.[1] 

Given the massive influx of an estimated twelve million illegal immigrants into the United States since the amnesty of 1987, these topics are not only timely, but also desperately need action. I would be remiss, however, if I didn't address the broader issue of illegal immigration and the authority of state and local governments to act regardless of acquiescence by the federal government.

(continue to The Heritage Foundation website complete with links and references)

Before I get too far in my remarks, let me take a moment to provide you with my background. I am a reformed lawyer who has now been out of the practice longer than I was in the practice. Since leaving the practice of law, I have served as the Deputy Regulator for then-Governor Bill Owens in the State of Colorado. I left that position to join the fledgling U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) where I was the Chief of Staff in what was called the Office for Domestic Preparedness. When my boss resigned, Secretary Tom Ridge named me as the Acting Executive Director of that office, which had been renamed the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. I led that office for 11 months.

Shortly after Secretary Michael Chertoff joined DHS, he and the Deputy Secretary asked me to serve as the Policy and Operational Counselor to the Deputy Secretary. I performed that function concurrently with my other two positions at DHS. In that role, I participated in the development of today's federal policy both on the border and in the interior of the country. These policy developments included migration from the detention-and-release policy to the detention-and-remove policy, the much-needed transformation of the Citizenship and Immigration Services office, and the increased focus on securing the border.

I serve as an Adjunct Professor at The Ohio State University, where I teach a course called "Homeland Security and Terrorism: A Comparative Analysis of Responses within the Transatlantic Alliance." I am currently working on a book titled Decentralizing Homeland Security: Protecting America from Outside the Beltway, which, as the title indicates, argues for a return to our federalist system in which state and local governments played a stronger role on the critical issues impacting the lives of Americans.

Finally, I am also a Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C., where I research and write about homeland security issues. I am heading a project for The Heritage Foundation that seeks to develop solutions for state and local governments in four homeland security areas: preparedness and resiliency, disaster management, interior illegal immigration enforcement, and counter-terrorism. It is my fundamental belief that the U.S. Constitution created a federalist system in which the federal government possesses expressed, but limited, powers in which the states and the people retain all remaining powers.

Testimony Continues on The Heritage Foundation website, complete with links and references