Speech #1090138994

President. I rise today to express my dismay that my amendment No. 4022 to S. 2611 is not part of the bill the Senate will vote on. At first glance. the immigration bill we are considering takes into account that if we put more border patrol agents and immigration personnel on the border. other Federal agencies that deal with immigration will need more resources. The bill adds new Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice attorneys. public defenders. and immigration judges. But the bill fails to account for that fact that while immigration cases typically go before immigration judges. repeat offenders can be charged with felonies and tried in Federal district court. As part of this bill. we should have considered the increased federal criminal immigration caseload we will have as a result of increased border security and immigration enforcement. and we should have added new District judges to hear those cases. Specifically. my amendment would implement the recommendations of the 2005 Judicial Conference for U.S. district courts that have immigration caseloads totaling more than 50 percent of their total criminal filings. There are four districts that have such caseloads. unsurprisingly. all of them are on the Southwest border. Those courts immigration caseloads vastly outweigh the immigration caseloads of northern border district courts that the 2005 Judicial Conference recommended new judgeships for. For example. in the Southern District of Texas there were 5.599 criminal filings in fiscal year 2004. and 3.688 of them were immigration cases. By comparison. the Western District of Washington had only 539 criminal filings. and only 78 of those were immigration cases. Similarly. in the District Court for Arizona there were 4.007 criminal filings in fiscal year 2004: 2.404 of them were immigration cases. But in Idaho. there were only 213 criminal filings. and only 71 of those were immigration cases. In fiscal year 2004. the Southern District of California had 3.400 criminal filings. and 2.206 of them were immigration cases. On the northern border. in the Western District of New York. there were only 497 criminal filings. only 35 of those were immigration cases. Lastly. in the District of New Mexico. there were 2.497 criminal filings in fiscal year 2004. and 1.502 of them were immigration cases. In the District of Minnesota. there were 431 criminal filings. and only 15 of them were immigration cases. With so many figures. the significance of those numbers may be lost. so let me sum those numbers up. In fiscal year 2004. my home state of New Mexico. which shares a border with Mexico. had 100 times more Federal criminal immigration cases than a state that shares a border with Canada. The Albuquerque Tribune wrote an article about this issue in March. That article. "Judges See Ripple Effect of Policy on Immigration." said: U.S. District Chief Judge Martha Vazquez of Santa Fe oversees a court that faces a rising caseload from illegal border crossings and related crime. And help from Washington is by no means certain . . Most typical immigration cases go before an immigration judge. and the subjects are deported. But people deported once and caught crossing illegally again can be charged with a felony. And that brings the defendant into federal district court. Those are the cases driving up New Mexicos caseload ...