Speech #1090119688

If you add the others. the number. obviously. will be larger. In March of 2005. Phoenix jails housed 1.200 criminal aliens who by law should have been deported. And even when deportation is ordered. according to a FOXNews report. about 60 percent of those orders are ignored. So you still have a huge number of people who are unaccounted for. In Los Angeles. in that same period. 95 percent of all outstanding homicide warrants and 60 percent of outstanding felony warrants were for illegal aliens. This is according to a FOXNews report. Let me repeat that statistic. If you want to know why we have offered this amendment. in L.A.. a year ago. 95 percent of all outstanding homicide warrants and 60 percent of outstanding felony warrants were for illegal aliens. That is an astounding figure. So while it is true many people come to this country to work and provide a better living for their families and the only crimes they have committed are coming into the country illegally and using fraudulent documents for employment and other purposes. it is also true a large amount of crime is associated with this phenomenon of illegal immigration. One of the first things we should do when we talk about enforcement of the law is to ensure we are not adding those criminals to the group of people who would be authorized to participate in what is going to be a very humane program of temporary worker. and for some a pathway to citizenship. Let me cite two other statistics. and then I would like to yield to my colleague from Texas. In September of 2004. of the 400.000plus illegal immigrants who were ordered to be deported. 80.000 had criminal records. Now we do not know their whereabouts. including the countries from which they came. The point here is that many were from countries that we call countries of interest: that is to say. countries where terrorists come from. We know there are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants today who are apprehended coming from those countries and probably three times as many who are not apprehended. So in addition to people who have committed crimes in the United States. there is a significant possibility some of these people pose the kind of threat this amendment would go to as well. Considering this group of socalled other than Mexicans. people who cannot simply be repatriated to Mexico who have to be sent to their home country. this number has increased dramatically.