Speech #1040203696

If the Terrorism Prevention Act had no other provisions to recommend it. I would have voted for the act for its habeas corpus reforms. Also praiseworthy are the provisions that address the serious problem this country has with deporting criminal aliens. Though officially designated "criminal aliens" rather than "terrorists." as far as I am concerned. noncitizens who commit violent. felonious acts against American citizens are resident terrorists. irrespective of their official designation. Indeed. according to the FBI. alien 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. Meanwhile. more than 50.000 crimes have been committed by aliens in this country recently enough that the perpetrators are still incarcerated in State and Federal prisons right now. Noncitizens in this country who are convicted of committing serious crimes are deportable and should be deported. These are not "suspected" criminals or members of secretly designated terrorist groups: These are convicted felons. And there are about half a million of them currently residing on U.S. soil. The reason these criminal aliens are here. despite their deportability under U.S. law. is that they are able to manipulate our immigration laws by requesting endless review of their orders of deportation. Exactly as in the habeas corpus context. these are convicted criminals obstructing the operation of law by abusing unduly generous provisions of judicial and administrative review. As long. as a petition for review is pending. they cannot be deported. Thus. at present. aliens who are convicted felons are deported at a rate of about 4 percent a year. The case of Lyonel Dor is typical. Lyonel Dor. a citizen of Haiti. entered the United States illegally in 1972. This alone made him deportable as an illegal alien. Six years later he participated in the murder of his aunt. For this. he was convicted of first degree manslaughter and served 6 years in prison. This made him doubly deportable. since aliens who commit crimes of violence in the United States are deportable even if they were here legally in the first place. Accordingly. Dor was ordered deported in March 1985 following a full administrative hearing on whether such an order should be entered. At that hearing. Dor conceded deportability. He took no direct administrative appeal from the March 1985 order. although he would have been entitled to do so. Nevertheless. as of late 1989. Dor had not been deported. Instead. he remained in this country. requesting and receiving unending additional collateral administrative review and judicial review of his order of deportation. tying up the courts and the INS for more than 5 years after completing his criminal sentence. As of today. April 29. 1996. I do not know whether Lyonel Dor has ever deported. or whether he is still in this country requesting more review. According to court documents described in the 1989 case. since arriving in this country illegally. Dor received the attention of a total of 14 administrative processes and 6 judicial processes. including the criminal proceedings on his participation in the murder of his aunt. The deportation effort alone for this illegl immigrant and convicted murderer entailed 13 administrative proceedings and 4 judicial proceedings. In two of the four judicial proceedings. Federal courts directed that Dor not be deported until the order of deportation could be further subject to yet more review. In this Act. as well as in the illegal immigration bill. I have strongly promoted legal reforms that will put an end to such absurdities. The Terrorism Prevention Act contains some of these provisions. including important reforms that will place some constraints on the almost limitless opportunities for criminal aliens to delay their deportations. In particular. without touching in any way any direct appeal an alien may have in connection with his underlying criminal conviction. it denies judicial review of orders of deportation entered against criminal aliens. eliminates certain grounds for administrative review of the orders of deportation entered against criminal aliens. and requires the Attorney General to deport criminal aliens with 30 days of the final order of deportation. I should add that during the Judiciary Committee markup of the pending illegal immigration bill. S. 1664. I proposed amendments to that legislation that will make additional reforms. and I am pleased to say that they were adopted and form a part of the bill now before Congress.