Press Gaggle by Dana Perino

Business Wire, August 10, 2007

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine -- Colony Hotel

11:15 A.M. EDT

MS. PERINO: Sorry I'm late. We just had the announcement out of the U.N. Security Council about the unanimous vote, so I have something for you on that. And I have a couple of other things. Let's do the schedule first and then I'll give you the two statements, all right?

The President, as some of you who were in the pool know, got up very early and went biking this morning, mountain biking. At 9:30 a.m. he had his regular briefings. He also taped the weekly radio address; the topic is Afghanistan and Pakistan working together to fight extremism, and increasingly good results out of the surge in Iraq.

At 10:15 a.m., the President, along with his father, President Bush 41, and his brother, Jeb, went out on a boat, probably casting a line. They're taking advantage of the great outdoors, it's one of the things that this family loves to do when they come up here in the summertime. I wouldn't expect a lot more readout out of Walker's Point. They do a lot of what other families do when they get together for family vacations --

Q Bicker?

MS. PERINO: Excuse me? Bicker? (Laughter.) Mark, is there something you want to tell us about your family?

Q Sorry, my mistake.

MS. PERINO: Let's do a statement by the press secretary, which is going to be me today, Dana Perino. "The President welcomes today's unanimous vote by the U.N. Security Council to renew the mandate for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq" -- UNAMI is the acronym, U-N-A-M-I. "This vote sends an important signal of the U.N. commitment to support stability and security in Iraq. The UNAMI mandate renewal also reinforces the broader international framework for Iraq, which includes international compact with Iraq and the neighbors process, which began in May in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The United States is fully committed to this framework and looks forward to working with the United Nations and international partners to support the Iraqi government and promote political dialogue in Iraq."

And then a statement by the President on immigration. Before I do that, some of you know that Secretaries Chertoff and Gutierrez are currently holding a press conference -- it started at 10:30 a.m., so hopefully they're probably winding that down -- and this is about a range of immigration issues and matters that the executive branch can address going forward, before the end of the President's term.

This is a statement by the President that we will release, as well. "Today, members of my Cabinet announced a series of important new administrative actions to address border security and immigration challenges. These reforms represent steps my administration can take within the boundaries of existing law to better secure our borders, improve worksite enforcement, streamline existing temporary worker programs, and help new immigrants assimilate into American society.

"Although the Congress has not addressed our broken immigration system by passing comprehensive reform legislation, my administration will continue to take every possible step to build upon the progress already made in strengthening our borders, enforcing our worksite laws, keeping our economy well-supplied with vital workers, and helping new Americans learn English. I appreciate the work of Secretary Chertoff and Secretary Gutierrez in implementing these important reforms, which will improve our security and enrich our nation."

With that, I'll go to questions.

Q Dana, during the debate about comprehensive immigration reform, the President repeatedly told the public that the system was broken -- you just repeated it in that statement -- and it was unacceptable. Now we have these Cabinet members talking about stepped-up enforcement. Why should people have confidence that this is going to actually make a difference when the law itself is broken? Isn't this stepped up enforcement of a broken law?

MS. PERINO: Well, let's take a step back and talk about what we have initiated under this President under border security while we waited for Congress to work on border security issues. For example, it was a year or a year and a half ago that we announced the stepped up border security enforcement, by increasing the Border Patrol agents by 1,700, to effectively double the amount of Border Patrol agents that we had in our system by the time the President left office.* And I think what you'll find in this announcement today, as well, is that in the comprehensive reform legislation debate, Senator Judd Gregg had an amendment to increase that by yet another 2,000 -- I'm sorry, increase it to a total of 20,000, which we are going to try to attempt to do, as well.

So even before Congress decided that they weren't going to act on comprehensive immigration reform, the President was acting on the border security issue. In addition to that, the President sent down the National Guard, and that has had quite an impact, as well.

Another thing that we did independently of congressional action was ended catch and release, which was -- the policy used to be in the United States that you found an illegal immigrant in the country, and you released them back to their country -- I'm sorry, you released them into our country, and they were supposed to come and show up for a court date. Of course they weren't showing up for their court dates, and we have effectively ended that process, and several other steps like that, as well.