On Thursday, February 6, FOX commentator Bill O'Reilly interviewed Congressman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) about

the U.S./Mexico border. In the interview, O'Reilly refers to undocumented Mexican immigrants as

"wetbacks." A partial transcript of the interview is available at:
 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77898,00.html
 

The following is a section taken from the partial interview I cut and pasted to
this e-mail from the webpage above.

 
O'REILLY: You believe in the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy hasn't worked in 35
  years.

  REYES: Bill, when you talk about the amount of narcotics coming into this country,
  90 percent of those narcotics come through the ports of entry, not in between the
  ports of entry where the Border Patrol is patrolling. They come through the ports of
  entry. That's why I'm saying let's give the Homeland Security Agency an
  opportunity...

  O'REILLY: All right. Let me...

  REYES: ... to get the technology to help.

  O'REILLY: What would be the harm in moving troops to help the Border Patrol not
  only in Mexico, but in Canada, where they just found a big Al Qaeda big shot up
  there. We know that border's a sieve as well.

  What is the harm in giving us more protection by using the military the way they
  should be used? If you read the Constitution, the military's primary mandate is to
  protect the borders of the United States.

  REYES: Bill, immediately after 9/11, we did do that. We deployed several thousand
  military people, both on the northern border and some on the southern border.

  We did not have the resources. It costs too much to continue that kind of a
  deployment around the clock and throughout the year. That's why I'm advocating that
  we continue to hire professional law-enforcement officers.

  Let's supplement them with the kind of technology that's available today, that...

  O'REILLY: Oh, I am with you there. You've got to get the high-tech stuff there.

  But I'll tell you what. I've talked to the commanders, and they tell me, "Look, you
  deploy us down there, we stop the drug traffic dead"…

  We'd save lives because Mexican wetbacks, whatever you want to call them, the
  coyotes -- they're not going to do what they're doing now, so people aren't going to
  die in the desert. So we save lives, all right, and we seal it down and make it 100
  times harder to come across.

  And 79 percent of Americans see that, Congressman. You are in the minority on this
  one, and so is President Bush. I'll give you the last word.

  REYES: Listen, just because we're in the minority doesn't mean we're not right, Bill. I
  already told you, if you're concerned about narcotics, then we need to focus on the
  ports of entry. That's where 90 percent of the narcotics...

  O'REILLY: The Army will be there as well, Congressman. They'll be there with their
  high-tech gear, with their nightscopes and everything else.

  All right. We appreciate you coming on.

  REYES: Thank you, Bill.