Speech #1090166017

Mr. President. I rise today with Senators KYL and CORNYN to introduce legislation that creates the new Federal judgeships recommended by the 2005 Judicial Conference for our U.S. district courts that have a serious overload of immigration cases. I believe it is imperative to equip all of our Federal agencies with the assets they need to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws. That includes equipping our U.S. district courts with enough judges to handle the criminal immigration cases that appear on their dockets. The immigration reform bill passed by the Senate in May recognizes that with increased border security and Immigration enforcement there will be increased prosecutions. and the bill calls for more immigration judges to handle those prosecutions. But the bill fails to recognize that repeat immigration law violators can be charged with a felony and tried in U.S. District Court. We need to increase the number of judges in our district courts that handle such cases. particularly in those districts that are already overwhelmed with immigration cases. The legislation I am proposing creates eleven new Federal judgeships. as recommended by the Judicial Conference. in the U.S. district courts in which at least 50 percent of their criminal cases are immigration cases. The bill affects four districts. all of which border Mexico. In fiscal year 2004. the Western District of Texas had 5599 criminal case filings. 3.688 of those cases. over 65 percent. dealt with immigration. The District Court of Arizona had 4.007 criminal filings. of which 2.404 cases. or 59 percent. were immigration filings. The Southern District of California has 2.206 immigration filings. 64 percent of their 3.400 total criminal filings. Lastly. the District of New Mexico had 2.497 criminal filings. 60 percent of them. 1.502 cases. were immigration cases. Based on these caseloads. I think we should already be giving these districts new judgeships. But to increase our border security and immigration enforcement efforts without equipping these courts to handle the even larger immigration caseloads that they are expected to face would be tantamount to willful negligence. The New Mexico District Chief Judge. Martha Vazquez. wrote me a letter in May about the situation the New Mexico District faces. Judge Vazquez wrote: As it is. the burden on Article 111 Judges in this District is considerable. This District ranks first among all districts in criminal filings per judgeship: 405 criminal filings compared to the national average of 87. As in all federal districts along the southwest border. the majority of cases filed in this District relate to immigration offenses under United States Code. Title 8 and drug offenses arising under Title 21. Immigration and drug cases account for eightyfive percent of the caseload in the District of New Mexico... In fiscal year 1997. there were 240 Immigration felony filings in the District of New Mexico. By fiscal year 2005. the number of immigration felony filings increased to 1.826. which is an increase of 661 percent ... Increasing the number of Immigration Judges will do nothing to reduce the increasing caseload in the border states federal courts. The Albuquerque Tribune has also documented the burden immigration cases put on district courts. An April 17 article entitled "Judges See Ripple Effect of Policy on Immigration." stated: 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 . . . From Sept. 30. 1999 to Sept. 30. 2004 (the end of the fiscal year). the caseload in the New Mexico federal district court increased 57.5 percent. from 2.804 to 4.416.