Speech #1090119688

As I said. it has paid roughly about a third of the expenses when we spend about $600 million a year: unfortunately. last year we only funded $305 million. Even if it were funded at $700 million. it would represent about a third of State costs. That gives some idea of the magnitude of expense associated with the housing of these illegal immigrants. With regard to the provision that deals with the socalled absconders. people who went before a judge and the judge said. for whatever reason. you must depart the United States. you are under court order to leave. but they dont. they just meld back into society. the Bureau of Immigration Customs Enforcement estimates that there are more than 400.000 such absconders and 80.000 fugitive criminal aliens with outstanding final orders of removal who are hiding in the United States. These are people who have committed serious crimes. There is no way that these people should be allowed to get on this path to citizenship or participate in this worker program. The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement estimated earlier this month that the number of fugitive aliens in the United States is about 465.000. Fugitives are foreign nationals who have been ordered removed by a Federal immigration judge but failed to comply with the order. From March 1 through September 30. 2003. which is when ICE began tracking fugitive apprehensions. there were 3.409 fugitives with final orders of removal who were apprehended. In the same period. 2004. they apprehended 7.239 fugitives with final orders of removal. which was an increase of 112 percent over that period in 2003. The point is that there are more and more criminal aliens coming to the United States or people committing crimes while they are here or people who are being given orders to depart and who are not doing so. I noted before that between 10 and 15 percent of the apprehensions of illegal immigrants today are people who have criminal records. And they are serious criminal records. We are talking about murder. homicide. kidnapping. drug offenses. rape. assaults. and the like.