Speech #1040070127

I believe this bill properly incorporates the best ideas as to the sorts of actions we should be taking at this time to address the problem of terrorism. wherever it may originate. At this point I would like. in my remarks. to highlight a series of provisions in the bill I have worked on with our outstanding floor leader and my good friend. the Senator from Utah. with the majority leader. and others. These provisions would facilitate the deportation of aliens who have committed serious crimes while in the United States. The provisions at issue. contained in title III. section 303(e) of the bill. require that aliens who are convicted of serious crimes in courts of law in this country be deported upon completion of their sentences without any further judicial review of the order of deportation. These expedited deportation procedures will apply to the almost half a million aliens currently residing in this country who are deportable because they have been convicted of committing serious felonies. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act. aliens who are convicted of felonies after entry are already deportable. They are rarely actually deported. however. because criminal aliens are able to request equitable waivers from the courts and other types of Judicial review that were never meant to apply to convicted felons. Such abuse of process operates to prevent the order of deportation from becoming final. Notably. both the administrations antiterrorism bill and S. 735 contain expedited deportation procedures for a small class of aliens reasonably suspected of planning future terrorist activity. The administrations bill. however. makes no provision for rapid deportation of aliens who have actually committed crimes. This. despite the fact that the Attorney General has said that the removal of criminal aliens from the United States is one of the administrations highest priorities and that our prisons and jails are crowded with criminal aliens. The substitute to S. 735 remedies that omission. According to the FBI. foreign terrorists have been responsible for exactly two terrorist incidents in the United States in the last 11 years: the World Trade Center bombing and a trespassing incident at the Iranian mission to the United Nations. While the World Trade Center bombing was obviously a very serious matter. it should not be the exclusive focus of our efforts to take strong action to protect American citizens from criminal conduct by noncitizens. More than 53.000 crimes have been committed by aliens in this country recently enough to put the perpetrators in our State and Federal prisons right now. An estimated 20 to 25 percent of all Federal prison inmates are noncitizens. in California. almost onehalf of the prison populations are noncitizens. According to a 1995 Senate Report on Criminal Aliens in the United States. a conservative estimate of the total number of deportable criminal aliens presently residing in the county is 450.000. All of these aliens have committed at least one serious crime in this country. For that reason all are deportable under the law. They have not been deported because they have been able to prevent the order of deportation from ever becoming final by seeking repeated judicial review. The grounds on which criminal aliens are legitimately entitled to waivers of deportation are extremely narrow. To avoid deportation. criminal aliens essentially must prove a case of mistaken identitythat the alien is not who the Government thinks he is. that he is not an alien. at all. or that he has been pardoned or had his conviction overturned. Mistakes of this order dc not happen often. Mistakes of this order certainly have not happened 450.000 timesfor each of the deportable criminal aliens currently in the country. Rather. the aliens capacity to demand successive Judicial review. even wholly merit less judicial review. grinds the deportation process to a halt. Meanwhile. the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not have adequate facilities to house this many criminal aliens. As a result. the great majority of these convicted felons are released back to our streets after serving their sentences. with instructions to report several months later for a hearing before the INS. Needless to say. the majority of criminal aliens released from custody do not return for their hearings. Having been returned to the streets to continue their criminal predation on the American citizenry. many are rearrested soon after their release. Thus. for example. a recent study by the GAO found that 77 percent of noncitizens convicted of felonies are rearrested at least one more time. In Los Angeles County alone. more than half of incarcerated illegal aliens are rearrested within 1 year of their release. The provisions at issue will put an end to this abuse of process by doing the following: First. they will prohibit the Attorney General from releasing criminal aliens from custody prior to deportation. They will also eliminate judicial review for orders of deportation entered against criminal aliensalthough criminal aliens will still be entitled to challenge their orders of deportation before the Board of Immigration Appeals. In addition. these provisions will require deportation of criminal aliens within 30 days of the conclusion of the aliens prison sentence in most circumstances. Finally. they will apply these expedited deportation to aliens who have committed the "General Crimes" listed in section 1251 of title 8 of the United States Code. These include crimes such as murder. rape. drug trafficking. espionage. sabotage. and treason. These reforms are extremely reasonable. Aliens in this country who commit these crimes will still be afforded all the due process protections and lengthy appellate and habeas corpus review afforded U.S. citizens on the underlying offense. Moreover. once those appeals have run and the conviction has been upheld. the alien will continue to be entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge to determine whether an order of deporatation should be entered. And if an order of deportation is entered. the alien will still retain the right to appeal the order to the Board of Immigration Appeals. The substitute to S. 735 only eliminates additional judicial review for criminal aliens beyond this point. Without the rapid deportation provisions for criminal aliens in this legislation. aliens who are convicted felons will continue to be deported at the current pace. that is about 4 percent a year. At this rateassuming no alien is ever convicted of another felonyit would take 23 years to deport all the aliens presently residing in the country who are under felony convictions. Meanwhile. many will be released back into society to prey on more American citizens.