Speech #1090052664

This confusion was. to some extent. fostered by an erroneous 1996 opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel. OLC. of the Department of Justice. the relevant part of which has since been withdrawn by OLC. Why was the Federal agency responsible for interior immigration enforcement telling my police chiefs in Alabama to let illegal aliens go free? To be fair. ICE still does not have the manpower or detention space to take custody and detain all illegal aliens. With less than 20.000 appropriated detention beds. ICE tells us over and over again that they do not have the bed space to detain all the illegal aliens that they apprehend. instead. they are forced to give first priority to detaining the worst of the worst individuals such as convicted felon aliens. It is shocking to me that even though we know that detention is a key element of effective removal. we do not even detain all illegal aliens that have been convicted of crimes for removal. Last February. in a report titled "The Immigration and Naturalization Services Removal of Aliens Issued Final Orders" the Department of Justice Inspector General found that 87 percent of those not detained before removal never get deported. Even in high risk categories. the IG found that only fractions of nondetained violators are ever removed- 35 percent of those with criminal records and 6 percent of those from "state sponsors of terrorism." These percentages have not changed since 1996. when the last IG report issued on the ability to remove aliens found that 89 percent of aliens with final deportation orders that are not detained are never removed. Just this month. during a joint hearing of the Judiciary Committee Immigration and Terrorism Subcommittees titled "The Southern Border in Crisis: Resources and Strategies to Improve National Security" we learned that in some jurisdictionssuch as Harlingen Texas-"no show" rates for immigration hearings are as high as 98 percent. Those numbers speak for themselves about our efficiency in the realm of immigration enforcement. The American people deserve better. they deserve to know that our laws will be enforced instead of ignored without consequence. But we can not lay all the blame on DHSthey can only detain illegal aliens that they have space to detain. We know that DHS is using all of the bed space that they have and that it is not enough they consistently tell us that they are releasing people that should be detained because there is no more room. The Homeland Security Enhancement Act would add critical bed space DHS needs to fulfill its mission of interior enforcement. The third problem that was brought to my attention and motivated my desire to introduce this bill. is the inadequate way we share immigration information with State and local police. We have databases full of information on criminal aliens and aliens with final deportation orders. but that information is not directly available to State and local police. They have to make a special second inquiry to the immigration center in Vermont just to see if an illegal alien is a wanted by DHS. The Hart Rhudman Report. "America Still UnpreparedAmerica Still In Danger." found that one problem America still confronts is "700.000 local and State police officials continue to operate in a virtual intelligence vacuum. without access to terrorist watchlists." The first recommendation of the report was to "tap the eyes and ears of local and State law enforcement officers in preventing attacks." On page 19. the report specifically cited the burden of finding hundreds of thousands of fugitive aliens living among the population of more than 8.5 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. and suggested that the burden could and should be shared with 700.000 local. county. and State law enforcement officers if they could be brought out of the information void. Without easy access to immigration database information. and with ICE unwilling to come and identify every suspected illegal alien. State and local police can not quickly and accurately identify who they have detained and who they will be releasing back into the community if they follow ICEs instruction to "just let them go." State and local police are accustomed to checking for criminal information in the NCIC. National Crime Information Center. database. which is maintained by the FBI.