Speech #1140056365

President. I would like to urge my colleagues to oppose S. 2146. the Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act. Hundreds of cities and local jurisdictions across our country have financial. constitutional. and public safety concerns with using scarce local tax dollars to hold immigrants in jail when they otherwise would be entitled to release under the law. These cities and towns are being called sanctuary cities because they have made a local and factbased choice to keep their communities safe rather than serve as an arm of immigration enforcement. This bill would create new criminal penalties for undocumented immigrants and make life even harder for them. most of whom are honest. hardworking people. not criminals. The bill also takes severe steps to penalize these sanctuary cities by stripping them of critical community block grants and Federal homeland security and law enforcement funding. While this bill purports to protect our communities. it is strongly opposed by law enforcement. victims advocates. and local and State government leaders. Why do they oppose this bill? Demonizing our immigrant communities and using them as scapegoats does not make America safer. Decades of research shows the following: that immigrants as a group are not a threat to public safety. that immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes than the rest of Americans. and that the higher rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime. Law enforcement is clear. This bill would limit their ability to keep all people in their communities safe. Good community policy requires collaboration and trust. Our law enforcement officials want to spend their time going after people who truly pose a threat to our safety. This bill would have us spend limited resources pursuing hardworking though undocumented members of their communities with no criminal history. Community law enforcement should not be coerced. because that is what this bill would require. It is a requirement. Community law enforcement should not be coerced into serving as an arm of Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That is what this bill does. Nobody is talking about voluntary collaboration and support for Federal Government enforcement of laws. Throughout this Congress. my Republican colleagues often rail against the Federal Government telling State and local governments what to do. but now when it comes to something as important as public safety and law enforcement. it is suddenly OK to second guess State and local law enforcement? Instead of turning hardworking immigrants into bogeymen. we should be focusing on real solutions for violent crime in our communities. If my colleagues who support this bill are serious about addressing violence in America. then they should come to the table to talk about how we can strengthen our laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. I have been saying. along with many of my colleagues for over a year now. if my Republican colleagues want to discuss immigration reform. we welcome that debate. Everyone agrees our immigration system is broken and needs reform. It has been 28 months since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill that had strong bipartisan support. Even though it was not perfect from my perspective. we nonetheless worked together to come up with a compromise bill. but House Republicans ducked the issue and refused to take up the immigration reform bill. The Senate comprehensive immigration bill would have reduced the Federal deficit by $1 trillion in just two decades because of the broad economic benefits immigration reform granted. It would have protected and united families. strengthened our border security. improved our economy. and encouraged job creation in our country. The Senates bill would have gotten millions of people out of the shadows. requiring them to pass criminal background checks and earn their path to citizenship. It would have let immigration enforcement officials focus on true security threats to our country. The Senates immigration bill included $46 billion in new resources to help our Border Patrol. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Of this amount. roughly $30 billion was added to the bill to further secure our borders. but that is not enough for some Republicans. Apparently. some will not be happy until we literally round up every undocumented immigrantsome 11 million of them in our countryand deport them. which would be catastrophic to our economy. not to mention impossible to do. The current sanctuary cities debate is not the first time some have tried to use myths about immigrants to scare Americans. This rhetoric could not be further from the truth about immigrants. I urge my colleagues to oppose these scare tactics and to vote no on the motion to proceed to S. 2146. I yield the floor.