The Senate Judiciary Committee called FBI Director Robert Mueller to Capitol Hill Wednesday for a hearing on FBI operations.

Mexico and the border issue arose during the hearing, triggered by a question from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. Mueller’s response focuses on spillover violence, specifically in the form of kidnappings. Here’s the transcript of a segment of the Q&A:

GRAHAM: I would like to acknowledge your service for probably one of the most challenging times in American history. I really appreciate what you've tried to do for our country in your whole...

MUELLER: Thank you, sir.

GRAHAM: ... force.

Mexico. You mentioned, I think, in your testimony about border patrol agents being killed. What's your assessment of the violence in Mexico? Is the border areas more dangerous? And where do you see this going in Mexico?

MUELLER: I think anybody looking at what's happened in the last several years along the border, but also inside Mexico in terms of the increase in homicides, the breakdown of the -- the -- to the extent that there was any cartel -- I don't want to say justice, but restraint -- has long since been lost with an increase in homicides, despite the efforts and intent of the Calderon administration from the outset to address it.

From our perspective, the concern is the violence coming north of the border. From our perspective, we've seen and had several years ago an uptick of kidnapping of individuals who may live in the United States but have businesses or family in Mexico be kidnapped in Mexico and the ransom sought from persons in the United States. We put together task forces to address that, and that has been reduced somewhat.

We have a priority of looking at corruption along the border, and we have a number of agents who are looking at border corruption. We've had a number of cases of border corruption that we have successfully investigated.

We have put together fusion squads or individuals from -- who are familiar with corruption, familiar with the narcotics trafficking, white collar crime, money laundering and the like, in the squads that we are using to -- hybrid squads we call them -- to address the activities on the border.

And finally, we put together an intelligence capability down in El Paso that brings in the intelligence from each of our offices, as well from our legal attache in Mexico City and headquarters, and we integrate that with the other players that are working on the border.

GRAHAM: Would you say it'd be fair observation that securing our border is probably more important than ever, that criminal activity is growing, and that terrorism threats are growing, and that we should really look at securing the border as a national security imperative

MUELLER: I think securing the borders has always been a national security imperative, yes, sir.

The hearing with Mueller came on the same day that the U.S. Justice Department and Mexican authorities offered separate rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of people responsible for the Feb. 15 shooting death of Immigration and Customs agent Jaime Zapata and the wounding of agent Victor Avila.

The US DOJ offered up to $5 million reward while the Mexicans offered 10 million pesos, or about $835,000.