Speech #1100020834

INHOFE. and ISAKSON. The ideas contained in the amendment have also been supported by Senators KYL and CORNYN. They included it in their immigration bill last Congress. Senators BEN NELSON and COBURN included those provisions in the NelsonSessions immigration enforcement bill in the last Congress. Additionally. my amendment is almost word for word the provision that the Senate Judiciary Committee included when It marked up the Senate immigration bill last year and the provision that the full Senate voted for when it passed S. 2611. The first section of the amendment reaffirms what I believe to be the existing inherent authority of State and local law enforcement to assist the Federal Government in enforcing the immigration laws of the United States during the normal course of carrying out their law enforcement duties. The amendment specifically states that the participation of State and local law enforcement personnel is not required. not mandated by this legislation. It is 100 percent voluntary. Section 2 of the amendment deals with the listing of immigration violators in the National Crime Information Center database. State and local officers need easily accessible roadside access to critical immigration information. just as they would do for citizens of the United States who violate our laws. Officers routinely. when they stop people on the road. run National Crime Information Center database checks when they pull over suspects. speeders. or people they are investigating for other crimes. The NCIC is their breadandbutter database. Today the immigration violators file of the National Crime Information Center database contains information on deported felons. alien absconders. and wanted persons. aliens with outstanding criminal warrants. That is in the National Crime Information Center database. But my amendment would direct that the Department of Homeland Security work with the FBI to place additional information on certain immigration violators into the already existing immigration violators file. The four categories of immigration violators whose information would be entered are. one. aliens who have final orders of removal. That is someone who has been apprehended. gone through a hearing. and a judge has ordered finally that they be removed from the country for whatever violation. two. it would cover aliens under voluntary departure agreements who for one reason or another have signed an order that they would voluntarily deport themselves or leave the country. No. 3. it would cover aliens who are known to have overstayed their au153. Pt. 4 5291 thorized period of stay. the visa overstays. and No. 4. it would cover aliens whose visas have been revoked. Sometimes people misbehave seriously. Twentyseven percent of our Federal penitentiary bed spaces today are filled by noncitizens. For some reason in recent years we are seeing a substantial number of criminal aliens coming into the country. These are not bed spaces for immigration law violations. not people waiting to be deported. These are people who have been arrested. tried. or convicted of Federal criminal laws such as drug dealing and assaults or smuggling. things of that nature. When State and local police officers encounter individuals during their regular law enforcement duties. it is important that they know if the individual in front of them falls into one of these violator categories.