Speech #970050308

With $1.175.000 of that additional money. we would be able to put on 58 additional INS officials at the Krome facility in Florida. As I mentioned earlier. that facility is woefully understaffed. and INS has been forced to take its people from other duties to staff the Krome facility. In addition. $770.000 of the sum would be used to purchase the food and other supplies tTE 14941 that INS needs to keep the facility operating. the massive influx of Haitian refugees has exceeded all expectations and projections. Without this extra money. it will be impossible for the Krome site to continue operating at any sort of level. Finally. $203.000 of the extra money would be used to hire 10 additional detention officials. It is anticipated that these officials would help our Border Patrol officials in the Southwest. The Judiciary Committee restored 160 border guard positions. restoring these 10 detention officials will help the border guards perform their duties more efficiently. The deportation program is designed to insure that every case involving a deportable alien is processed expeditiously. and. if necessary. that actual deportation from the United States occurs. At a time when the INS is swamped with deportation hearings. it is absolutely essential that it has the people in place to make sure that the job gets done. It is clear that we do not have the people in place to do the job today. The backlogs and the long lines attest to that. I understand there are an estimated 100.000 deportation cases backlogged at INS offices. mainly in Miami. New York and in Los Angeles. This provision of additional funding will help insure that INS has the resources to adequately carry out its mandate and enforce the laws. The administration proposed cutting some 43 positions in the deportation programs. $668.000 of the funds provided for in this amendment would be earmarked for restoring those 43 positions. My amendment also restores $1 million to proceed with the implementation of a system to record and locate alien arrivals in and departures from the United States. The ability to identify and control aliens in our country is critical if we are to regain control of immigration. We saw the almost impossible task facing immigration officials last year when the order was given to locate and verify the status of Iranian students in the United States. I am told that every college and university in the country has to be called because the requested information was just not available any other way. I think we need to bring INS into the 20th century in its recordkeeping.