Speech #CREC-2017-06-29-pt1-PgH5333_t75

Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time. Mr. Speaker, we are a nation of immigrants. There is not a person who has participated in this debate today who cannot go back a few years, a few generations or several generations and find someone in their family who came here to the United States, but we are also a nation of laws. The loss of respect for the rule of law is absolutely a serious problem in this country, and the step-by-step approach to restoring respect for the rule of law and reforming our immigration laws starts with these bills, the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act and Kate's Law. We are all about today, in this legislation, enhancing public safety, securing our borders, and restoring the rule of law. We give discretion to Federal judges--discretion to Federal judges, I would add--to make sure that people who have entered this country previously illegally and who reenter the country can be given enhanced sentences. It is not mandatory by any means, and, in fact, in many instances, it would be better to send the person outside the country and not have the taxpayers bear the expense. But in the case of the individual who murdered Kate Steinle and had reentered the country five times and had committed other crimes while in the United States, having that additional time that the judge could impose on that individual who was just being released for having been convicted of illegally entering the country, Bureau of Prisons should have turned him over to ICE to send him out again. But if the ICE agents wanted to, when he entered illegally the previous time, recommend that he be given more time than the sentence he just served, he would have still been in prison when Kate Steinle walked down that pier with her father and was murdered by him. So when those on the other side say this was not preventable by this law, they are entirely wrong. This law would have prevented that if a judge had chosen to impose that additional time that we are today providing in these cases. We also clear up some uncertainty regarding this current law, and I think it is entirely appropriate to do so. It will deal with some of the situations that those on the other side have discussed, but most importantly, it will discourage people from entering the United States illegally, particularly when they have already entered illegally earlier and have been convicted of a crime for doing so. So, to me, this is absolutely the beginning point of restoring to law enforcement at every level in our country the necessary tools to enforce our immigration laws, to work together to keep American citizens safe, like Kate Steinle and many, many others. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to meet with about a dozen representatives of families who lost loved ones to the criminal acts of people who were not lawfully present in the United States. And so it is also entirely true to say that, had those individuals not been present in the United States, those crimes would not have been committed, those, in most instances, murders, in all instances, killings, would not have taken place. Therefore, when you enforce our immigration laws, unlike laws applying to American citizens who also commit crimes, in the case of people who are not lawfully present in the United States, these crimes are entirely preventable if we enforce our immigration laws. Therefore, I would urge my colleagues to support Kate's Law and the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act to make sure that we go down this road of restoring the trust of the American people in their system of government, in their protection by their government, and in their own respect for the rule of law and know that their government is upholding that with regard to other individuals as well. This is a good bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it.