Speech #980214448

Chairman. I rise in support of the amendment. Both the Attorney General and the INS have attempted to curtail local police practices of enforcing the immigration laws. In a June 1978 press release. then Attorney General Griffin Bell stated that "The responsibility for enforcement of the immigration laws rests with the Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS]. and not with State and local police." More than a year prior to that press release. the INS issued a similar instruction to its regional commissioners. Although the Immigration and Nationality Act expressly authorizes local police involvement in the enforcement of Federal immigration laws in only one instance (8 U.S.C. 1324(C) 1976). Local police departments have not confined their enforcement of those laws to that portion of the statute. This expanded local police involvement has continued. notwithstanding admonitions from the Department of Justice and the Immigration and Nationality Service that enforcement of immigration laws is the reponsibility of the INS. Officers of the El Paso Police Department are known to apprehend aliens and return them to the Mexican side of the frontier. It has also been charged that local police in San Diego continue to attempt enforcement of the immigration laws. and even a former INS district director has acknowledged that local police are continuing to place "immigration holds" on persons suspected of immigration violations. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in September of 1980 recommended that Congress should clarify the Immigration and Nationality Act to specify that immigration laws should only be enforced by the INS. This recommendation was based on extensive findings that local police involvement in enforcing the immigration laws has resulted in violations of the constitutional rights of American citizens and legal residents. We simply agree with this recommendation.