Speech #CREC-2017-06-29-pt1-PgH5362_t4

He had been incarcerated before. He had been encountered by law enforcement before, and they turned him loose on the streets. This happens again and again in America every day, local law enforcement picking up people that are unlawfully present in America, violating our immigration laws. The law requires that they be placed into removal proceedings. That is the law, but they turn them loose anyway and turn them out on the streets because we have sanctuary cities and sanctuary cities policies. Some local jurisdictions that don't have a written policy, but they just simply--it is a practice that they have evolved into accepting. So when I say every one of the Americans who died at the hands of someone who is unlawfully present in America, illegal aliens, generally speaking, every one of those are a preventable death. If we enforced the law, they wouldn't have been in America in the first place to commit the crimes they committed against our American citizens, our innocent people like Sarah Root, this beautiful young lady with a perfect grade point average, the world ahead of her, a happy, joyful young lady that, today, would be living, loving, laughing, and learning and contributing to our society. But she is in her grave today because Eswin Mejia got triple drunk, was unlawfully in the United States, and ran her car down and killed her on the streets and absconded for a $5,000 bond. What we did with Sarah's Law--this is H.R. 174, the original language--and I wanted to assure the family of Sarah Root that this language is incorporated into the bill we passed today. It is incorporated into sanctuary cities legislation that we passed today. And what it does is it prohibits the judge from releasing an illegal alien on bond if they have been charged with or subject to a homicide or a crime where there is serious bodily injury. Once this issue came up in Omaha, Nebraska, and the public knew about this, we tried to unseat the judge that released this criminal that may have done damage again. But the judge that had let him out on $5,000 had a similar case.