Speech #1010196752

Mr. President. early in the morning of July 16. a riot involving 40 criminal aliens took place inside an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention center in New York City. This riot. which resulted in the injury of two detention officers. dramatizes how INS detention centers across this country have become powder kegs of violence. The system for deporting criminal aliens simply does not work. To address what has become a serious crisis. I am introducing. together with Senator DOLE. the Criminal Alien Deportation and Exclusion Act. This bill expands on the deportation legislation I introduced two years ago as part of the AntiDrug Abuse Act of 1988. In the New York City detention center. over 200 criminal aliens have been convicted of over 650 crimes. including 204 convictions for the sale of narcotics. 63 convictions for weapons offenses. 22 convictions for robbery. and 7 convictions for murder and attempted murder. According to INS. the cost to the taxpayer of keeping 3.300 criminal aliens in detention is nearly $50 million a year. There is a national backlog of 240.000 deportation and exclusion and other cases pending in immigration courts nationwide. According to the October 1989 GAO report entitled. "Immigration Control: Deporting and Excluding Aliens from the United States": Over the past 3 years. only about 22.000 aliens have been deported each year. That is only about 1 to 2 percent of the total estimated deportable alien population of 1.2 to 2.2 million potentially deportable alienspage 16. GAO report. In New York and Los Angeles. 59 percent of deportation cases take more than 1 year to complete from the time of apprehension to an immigration judges decision. When a decision is appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. 81 percent take more than 2 years. 21 percent of the cases take more than 5 years to resolve. and exclusion cases appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals generally take 3 years to resolve. The bill Senator DOLE and I are introducing will eliminate many of the outrageous claims that criminal aliens make to fight deportation. For example. criminal aliens today can seek a waiver of deportation if they can show 7 years of unrelinquished domicile in the United States. For many criminals. obviously. their domicile has been a prison. and for them to seek a waiver of deportation based on a 7year prison term is unconscionable. Section 8 of our bill closes that loop hole. Section 10 of our bill will put an end to the practice whereby aliens convicted of murder. and gun and drug trafficking. can now claim that their good moral character should prevent their deportation. Mr. President. the system clearly tilts too far in the direction of helping criminal aliens. It is time to restore balance to the system to protect innocent lawabiding citizens from murderers and drug dealers. I therefore urge my colleagues to give the Criminal Alien Deportation and Exclusion Act their full support. and I ask unanimous consent that the full text of the bill. together with a sectionbysection analysis be printed in the RECORD.