[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EMPOWERING LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT TO COMBAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY, AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
AUGUST 25, 2006
__________
Serial No. 109-243
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JON C. PORTER, Nevada C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina Columbia
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania ------
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio (Independent)
BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
David Marin, Staff Director
Lawrence Halloran, Deputy Staff Director
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
PATRICK T. McHenry, North Carolina ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DAN BURTON, Indiana BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JOHN L. MICA, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota DIANE E. WATSON, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
CHRIS CANNON, Utah C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio Columbia
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Marc Wheat, Staff Director
Dennis Kilcoynce, Counsel
Malia Holst, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on August 25, 2006.................................. 1
Statement of:
Cloninger, Alan, sheriff, Gaston County...................... 40
Lands, Michael, District Attorney, Gaston County............. 43
Moose, Emily, mother of Scott Gardner........................ 55
Pendergraph, Jim, sheriff, Mecklenburg County................ 48
Smith, Kenneth A., Special Agent, ICE........................ 15
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Cloninger, Alan, sheriff, Gaston County, prepared statement
of......................................................... 42
Foxx, Hon. Virginia, a Representative in Congress from the
State of North Carolina, prepared statement of............. 82
Lands, Michael, District Attorney, Gaston County, prepared
statement of............................................... 45
McHenry, Hon. Patrick T., a Representative in Congress from
the State of North Carolina, prepared statement of......... 10
Moose, Emily, mother of Scott Gardner, prepared statement of. 58
Pendergraph, Jim, sheriff, Mecklenburg County, prepared
statement of............................................... 51
Smith, Kenneth A., Special Agent, ICE, prepared statement of. 18
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 5
EMPOWERING LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT TO COMBAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
----------
FRIDAY, AUGUST 25, 2006
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Gastonia, NC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:06 a.m., at
Congresswoman Myrick's District Office, Gastonia, NC, Mark E.
Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Souder, Myrick, Foxx and McHenry.
Staff present: Dennis Kilcoyne, counsel; Scott Springer,
congressional fellow; and Kimberly Craswell, clerk.
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come to order. Good
morning and thank you all for coming. This is the third hearing
our subcommittee has held this year on the subject of illegal
immigration. The first was in Winston-Salem in April on illegal
immigrant gangs, and the second was just last month in
Washington, DC, on the proposed expansion of the Southwest
border fence. I'd like to thank my fellow member and good
friend, Sue Myrick, classmate, who was--has invited us here to
her district. I hope that the information we gather at this
hearing will help us achieve the goals of securing our border
and enhancing Federal partnership with State and local
officials in combating illegal immigration. I should also point
out that this subcommittee did a major border report three or 4
years ago before the creation of the Homeland Security
Committee that was the foundation of the border committee, that
2-year cycle we did somewhere in the vicinity of 10 to 12
hearings on both the Southwest border and on the Northern
border in Canada so--and we have oversight over the Justice
Department, which is why we work on illegal immigration. This
is just the third hearing in the cycle of the last 6 months.
Since 2001, the illegal immigrant population in this
country has been swelling by nearly 1 million annually. After
crossing the border, most illegal immigrants undoubtedly would
prefer to quietly find work and earn money rather than
participate in any activity that might draw the attention of
law enforcement. However, some of them feel no such restraint,
as many Federal, State and local police agencies will attest.
As the illegal immigrant population swells, so too does the
population of criminals among them.
To cope with this growing problem, drastic improvements in
border security and internal enforcement of immigration laws
are needed. Today's hearing will focus on what Federal law
enforcement agencies can do and are doing to partner with State
and local officials in enforcing immigration laws.
The main Federal agency tasked with internal enforcement of
immigration laws is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or
ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. The
most recent estimate for our illegal immigrant population from
January 2005 is 10.5 million. Undoubtedly, then, it must be at
11 million by now, and over 300,000 of these are in North
Carolina. For this, ICE has approximately 3,500 agents. It is
unable to adequately pursue all leads on immigration
violations, even ones that involve serious criminal violations.
As long as these violations can only be pursued spottily there
is little hope of building a genuine climate of deterrence of
those inclined to violate immigration laws. Even deportation of
criminal aliens released from prison cannot always be done, due
to the lack of resources and coordination, not to mention that
they come right back across.
One solution to these dilemmas has been growing since it
was first tried in 2002. This is known as the 287(g) cross-
designation training program. By the authority of Section
287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Department
of Homeland Security can enter into assistance agreements with
State and local agencies. The agreements are spelled out in a
Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, in which the scope, intent,
responsibilities and procedures of the program are covered.
These agreements allow State and local officials much-needed
flexibility to shape and guide the program. ICE personnel then
train the State and locals in a 5-week program--currently
costing roughly $520 per officer trained--focusing on
immigration law, civil rights, intercultural relations and
issues and illegalities surrounding racial profiling. Once the
training is completed and examinations are passed, the officers
receive official ICE certification and authority to enforce
certain immigration laws. Thereafter, ICE continues to provide
supervision and support so that officers might respond
appropriately when a suspect is found to be an illegal alien.
Though this opportunity has existed in law since 1996, no State
or locality took advantage of it until the Florida Department
of Law Enforcement did so in 2002.
In practical terms, 287(g) training and certification gives
local law enforcement a vital tool in combating a criminal
class that grows with the illegal immigrant population. Many
criminal illegal aliens who, given circumstances, might
otherwise have to be released can be held and processed for
deportation or Federal prosecutions. State and local officers
can interview suspects and prison inmates to determine if
immigration laws have been violated, process and fingerprint
them for such violations, prepare documents for deportation and
refer criminal aliens to ICE for potential Federal prosecution.
A recent case in California demonstrates the urgent need
for expanded 287(g) training. On July 15, a notorious gang
member in Los Angeles, one Mauricio Alejandro Jimenez, shot and
killed a pair of 1 and 3-year-old brothers. Area law
enforcement was well acquainted with him, having arrested him
seven times for various gun and gang crimes.
He had recently been deported after serving a year in
prison, but had immediately re-entered the country and returned
to haunt his old neighborhood. Had local authorities been
trained under 287(g) and received authority to enforce
immigration laws, they would have been able to immediately
arrest and process him without having to wait for any Federal
assistance or for him to commit further crimes under State law.
Many such criminals like Jimenez are able to thrive in
their communities because of the reluctance of their victims to
cooperate with police. Otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants
are fearful that any contact with authorities could result in
deportation. But once officers, deputies and detectives obtain
immigration-law authority, they can arrest gang members like
Jimenez and remove them from the neighborhoods without the
delays caused by having to painstakingly build trusting
relationships with suspicious immigrants.
It is the constitutional responsibility of the Federal
Government to protect the borders and regulate immigration.
Given the scope of the problem of illegal immigration, the
Federal Government should move quickly to provide 287(g)
training and authority to the growing number of State and local
jurisdictions that are requesting it. This hearing will explore
the North Carolina experience with 287(g) and seek answers to
the strengths and weaknesses of the program.
For the first panel, we are joined by Mr. Kenneth A. Smith,
Special Agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Atlanta
office.
On our second panel, we are joined by Gaston County Sheriff
Alan Cloninger, District Attorney Michael Lands of Judicial
District 27A, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph and
Ms. Emily Moose, who has a painful personal story about what
happens when government fails to properly enforce its
immigration laws.
Now I have a couple of additional points I want to make.
There has apparently been some misunderstanding on a few points
that we've attempted to clarify. This is a congressional
oversight hearing; it is not a town hall meeting. We have
brought two panels of witnesses here to answer questions and
give us information that we as Members of Congress need to see
that this program is being utilized as it should be and to be
better informed is the purpose of our subcommittee under the
Constitution and the laws of the United States. I thank all the
audience members who have come here to observe us as we carry
out our constitutional duties and we ask you all to help us by
refraining from any interruptions about the rule of law and we
need to follow the law. We allow people to observe because we
represent you in Congress and people are allowed to watch our
congressional hearings in Washington as they are in the field.
It's good for us to get into the field where we can, one, not
have bells go off and being--running around and actually focus
our attention rather than, how do I say it, before ADD when we
got elected to Congress and ADD shortly thereafter because of
all the things that come at us.
Let me briefly explain for those who are not familiar with
our committee. Congress is set up such that we have authorized
committees. The best--a simple example would be education where
we set out the No Child Left Behind.
Then we have an appropriations committee that would fund
those decisions that are guidelines by the Education Committee.
Then we have oversight committees to see that the executive
branch is implementing the intent of what was authorized and
funded and that also to see whether there need to be changes in
those laws. This is part of a--an oversight committee. The
oversight committees in Congress were created almost
immediately even before the authorized committee because even
back in George Washington's day Congress immediately became
concerned whether the executive branch was implementing the
programs that they did. So this committee is actually one of
the oldest in Congress. Then we have--My subcommittee that I
chair has oversight over all criminal issues. Drug policy in
particular is where our primary focus is in Congress because we
do the authorizing and the oversight on the drug czar's office
and on narcotics. So about half of our hearings deal with
narcotics. It's taken us into border issues and immigration
issues.
The full committee, and you'll see today and I'll explain,
we--we swear our witnesses in; that probably it used to be we
were best known for doing many investigations on the previous
Presidential administration under President Clinton but lately
it's--I don't want to talk about the past, and Mark McGwire and
Rafael Palmeiro who pointed his finger at both Patrick and I
and said that--Patrick is vice chairman of our subcommittee,
Congressman McHenry, and he said: I never used these steroids.
And it was pretty amazing. Anyway, that's the genesis of our
committee and what our subcommittee does and it's great to be
here again in North Carolina and now we yield to the vice
chairman of the subcommittee Congressman McHenry.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.003
Mr. McHenry. Thank you, Chairman Souder. Thank you for
coming to Western North Carolina once again. Thank you for
coming back and I'm very grateful that you chose my native
Gaston County to have this important hearing and I want to
thank my colleague Sue Myrick for opening her wonderful office
and hosting us here today. This is quite an important event for
us to discuss the impact on illegal immigration; that impact
that it has on local law enforcement. This is the discussion
today. We're not going to go outside of that purview that we
have here on this committee. As Vice Chair of the committee as
Chairman Souder said we have oversight over criminal justice
programs in the executive branch. We also have enormous
oversight over drug policy; anti-drug policy, and that's where
we have been very involved when Chairman Souder brought the
committee down a few months ago to the northern part of my
district to discuss how to curb meth abuse.
But today we have an important hearing, Mr. Chairman, about
illegal immigration and the impact it has on our communities
and local law enforcement. With an estimated 11 to 12 million
of illegal immigrants in the country a number of congressional
field hearings are being held at this August work period when
Members of Congress are back in their districts for a full
month in order to get a better understanding of the challenges
facing our Nation as a result of this illegal flow of coming--
of folks coming across our border. It's often said that America
is a Nation of immigrants. While that is true I also believe
that America is a Nation of laws and without the respect for
law we cannot have a foundation for society. And what we are
seeing with illegal immigration is a disrespect and a disregard
for our laws that we have in place. And in--while North
Carolina is not a border State it's greatly impacted on many
fronts by those who choose to ignore our laws and enter this
country illegally.
According to a March 2006 projection report by the
Federation of American Immigration Reform, FAIR, there are an
estimated 450,000 illegal immigrants in North Carolina. This
increase in population makes the State one of the top five
highest percentage of illegals. We have one of the top five
illegals--illegal populations in the Nation. Now while we're
not a border State we are being affected as if we were a border
State and it's important now more than ever that we empower
local law enforcement to deal with the rising tide of illegal
immigration. This is a multi-tiered front that we have to face
and while we need to certainly secure our border the discussion
here today is how do we get the tools in place for local law
enforcement to deal with this illegal population.
There has also been a growing interest in the 287(g)
program which allows local law enforcement to assist Federal
agents in performing immigration law enforcement functions. As
the illegal population in the States grow we have witnessed a
surge in crimes linked to illegal immigration over the past few
years ranging from drunk driving accidents involving illegals
to increased drug trade and interstate smuggling. While all of
these are very important things we have to have the tools in
place to curb them and stop them. And there's been a noted
increase in trafficking of a more potent form of
methamphetamine called Ice which is primarily manufactured in
Mexico before it's distributed throughout Western North
Carolina and throughout the Southeast.
I want to thank Sheriff Cloninger, my sheriff here in
Gaston County. Thank you so much for agreeing to testify today
and for your perspective. It's very important as someone--as
you'll say in your testimony as someone who is going through
the process of getting your deputies crossed over into the
287(g) program. We also have Sheriff Pendergraph from
Mecklenburg County and he's going to discuss the tools that
they currently have in place with the 287(g) program and the
results they've been able to get already in Mecklenburg County.
Additionally, my district attorney as well, Mike Lands. Thank
you for being here and I'm looking forward to your testimony
because of your unique perspective dealing in the criminal
justice system in the courthouse. Also ICE Agent Ken Smith.
Thank you so much for agreeing to be here. And, finally, Ms.
Moose, I'm very grateful for your willingness to tell your
story and to share with the community the pain and the
suffering you've gone through because of illegal immigration.
While this is a larger national debate it's important that
we not lose sight of the effect it has on local communities and
local law enforcement and that's the discussion we have here
today. And I want to thank Sue Myrick for her leadership in
Congress dealing with this challenging issue; her innovative
ideas to crack down on illegal immigrants that are committing
heinous crimes here in this country. Your leadership has been
noted in Washington, DC, and I certainly appreciate it as a
colleague, neighbor and friend. And so with that, Mr. Chairman,
thank you so much for agreeing to have this field hearing
today. It's important that we get feedback from local folks and
I appreciate you traveling down to our great State once again.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Patrick T. McHenry
follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.005
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Before yielding to Congresswoman
Myrick, it's been great to have both Congressman McHenry and
Congresswoman Foxx on our subcommittee as Members of Congress
and she'll be joining us hopefully soon is my understanding.
But Congresswoman Myrick and I were elected the same year in
1994. She's been a very passionate advocate for North Carolina.
One way you can tell this, this is my third time at a hearing
in the Charlotte area that in--early on in our term because I'm
a senior member of the Education Committee we did an education
event in Charlotte. We did a--I said the authority of our
subcommittee is broad. We did a series of hearings on faith-
based and a few years ago we were in Charlotte looking at all
the different faith-based programs and Charlotte is one of the
centers in the country so we did a regional Southeastern U.S.
area on faith-based in Charlotte. She's also been buttonholing
people for many years before immigration--she was concerned
about immigration laws before being concerned about immigration
laws was cool, if that would be the correct country phrase, and
very concerned about these issues and has been very passionate
for multi- terms and it's great to be here today with both of
my colleagues from North Carolina and now I'd like to yield to
my distinguished friend and colleague Congresswoman Sue Myrick.
Mrs. Myrick. Thank you, Mark. I appreciate it very much and
we're grateful to you for being here and, Patrick, it's good to
have a vice chairman of the committee from Gaston County.
That's always very good. It gives us a little more clout up
there as well. And I also want to thank all of you who took
your time to come today. I know some of you took time off of
work to be here because this is an important issue to you as
well. This is not an issue that only affects the border States
as we found out and the explosive growth that we've had in
North Carolina with illegal immigration has really changed our
State in the past decade and we're not, of course, the only one
dealing with this new dynamic that's been presented. That's one
reason we're finally able to get the attention of people in
Congress to make something happen. It is a nationwide issue and
it challenges the core beliefs of our country and has national
security implications of grave importance.
We're a Nation of immigrants as has already been said. Most
of you probably know your ancestral heritage. We all came from
someplace, our grandparents or great grandparents did, and we
know that there are economic and societal benefits to legal
immigration but we're also a Nation of laws and immigrants who
enter our country illegally have undermined the fundamental
tenet of our society, that's respect for our law. We in
Congress are largely responsible for the illegal immigration
crisis that we're now trying to fix because for years as was
mentioned by the chairman efforts to protect our Southern
border were hampered by the Federal Government turning a blind
eye to the ever-growing problem and, consequently, you know the
stats; eight to 13 to 20 million people today in the country,
and that doesn't include the children of illegal immigrants who
are born here who become citizens; granted automatic
citizenship. It strains our schools and our social services and
our law enforcement.
State and local governments are bearing a great deal of the
cost of this illegal immigration and they're fed up with the
Federal Government, very frankly, not carrying out its
responsibilities. I hear it every day from all of my
constituents, I'm sure my colleagues do the same, that we
aren't protecting our borders and enforcing our laws. And, you
know, they have a right to be angry about the fact that we
haven't done everything we should. Even more trouble- some to
me is the very real possibility Islamic fundamentalists have
slipped into our country to commit acts of terror and this is a
very important part of this whole problem. What's going on in
the Middle East today with Iran and the funding and the
training and the supporting of terrorists and the hate for
America that's being generated by the Islamic fascists is no
secret. They've made it clear they want to kill us and the
images on TV of Iranian troops who are marching, the young
people in the stands saluting was an image of 1938 Germany all
over again and we all vowed that wouldn't happen and so, you
know, when it comes to the big picture of terrorism worldwide
when are we going to wake up in America and political
correctness stop.
The Department of Homeland Security and Congress are
currently working together in an effort to secure our borders
and some progress is being made and, yes, the National Guard
troops have helped but there is a great deal of work left to be
done and I truly believe we can do this if we put the resources
behind it that are needed and, unfortunately, interior States
like North Carolina are still fighting an uphill battle to get
the help that we need with illegal immigration. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with investigating,
apprehending and deporting criminal illegal aliens, doesn't
receive adequate resources to do their job. I mean, we've got
phenomenal people here who are doing just unbelievable things
with very limited resources in North Carolina. We're very
blessed by good committed people who care but ICE is for the
most part the only Federal agency--immigration agency working
in the interior States and they face a monumental challenge in
trying to enforce our laws.
So the 287(g) program which you've already heard we're
going to talk about today with our sheriffs does give local law
enforcement agencies the opportunity to help with criminal
illegal aliens and to begin the deportation practice. And
that's what we're talking about, criminal illegal aliens. The
mission of law enforcement naturally is to provide public
safety and a lot of times their hands are tied when it comes to
this so Mecklenburg County entering into this has been a great
help and you'll hear about that. Illegal immigration can't be
addressed simply by law enforcement alone and that's why I and
several of my colleagues have been working very hard to get an
immigration court here in North Carolina because right now as
Patrick mentioned 450,000 at least illegals here. When they're
arrested and they are told to show up for court in a hearing
they have to go to Atlanta 4 to 8 hours away. Fat chance
they're going to show up. I mean, we know that.
They don't go. And that's been a really big problem. So
there are a lot of States that are smaller than we are that
have immigration courts and we feel that it's our turn now to
get one. We're working on that and hopefully it won't be too
long before that happens. Emily Moose is going to testify
today. I've introduced legislation that became part of the bill
we passed through the House that very simply says that if you
are arrested for driving drunk and you are illegal you're
automatically deported, and then that the local people have to
report that into a data base federally so everybody will know.
That is part of the bill. We hope it's going to stay a part
of--we hope we're going to get Congress support and an
immigration bill done through Congress very soon. If it doesn't
we'll still push to get that as stand-alone legislation because
it needs to be enacted.
But I really appreciate again the chairman coming because
this field hearing is important. It's important that they hear
from people around the country who are actually doing the
legwork and dealing with the problem and, you know, people in
Washington and the agencies have different jobs but these guys
are on the firing line every day and you'll hear some testimony
today that's going to share--show a lot of insight into what
the problems are they're dealing with and then hopefully this
committee and Congress as a whole will be able to do what we
need to do to help solve the problems that they're facing
today. Again, Mr. Chairman, thank you for your consideration.
Mr. Souder. As many of you may be aware for the last 3
months we have been doing systematic multiple committees,
immigration hearings. This will be the greatest collection of
information and part of that group over a 3-month period
totally embedded in the United States hopefully can lead to
action. I needed to mention two other things that are very
interesting at a personal level. One is I want to congratulate
Congresswoman Myrick on this office. As a former mayor of
Charlotte I know she shares a passion for historic
rehabilitation like me. One of the things we're doing in this
cycle in our committee as I said we have a broad jurisdiction.
We've been doing a series of hearings on national parks and
being able to preserve downtowns and old buildings like this is
just really great. This is certainly the best district office
I've been in.
I've been in a few nice ones.
Mr. McHenry. Actually, Chairman, I just turned around and
saw the mayor of Gastonia and she nearly leapt out of her seat
because she's been working for 6 years on an overnight success
for Downtown Gastonia and she's getting there and certainly Sue
Myrick's office here is a vital part of it.
Mr. Souder. Charlie Rich years ago when he had the Behind
Closed Doors hit, they said: What's it feel like to be an
overnight success? He said: Overnight success? I sang in bars
for 30 years to get to my overnight success, and that's the way
it is. The other thing is I feel a little like coming home. I
grew up in the retail furniture industry and spent spring and
falls here before half of it went to China which is another
comment but our furniture--we sold North Carolina furniture; I
have in my house North Carolina furniture so I need to make
that note.
I have a couple of procedural things we need to do before
we get started before we hear testimony to take care of these
procedural matters. I first ask unanimous consent that all
Members have 5 legislative days to submit written statements
and questions for the hearing record.
Any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses
also be included in the record without objection; so ordered.
Second, I ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents
and other material referred to by members and witnesses may be
included in the hearing record and that all members be
permitted to revise and extend those remarks without objection.
It is so ordered. Finally, I ask unanimous consent that all
members present be permitted to participate in the hearing.
That objection is so ordered.
Our first panel as it is the custom of a Federal oversight
committee is a Federal Government panel and it's composed of
Mr. Kenneth Smith, the Special Agent in charge of the Atlanta
office for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE].
If you'll stand and raise your right hand. As you know it's the
standard practice of our witnesses to be sworn in as an
oversight committee.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that the witness responded
in the affirmative. Thank you very much for coming and we look
forward to your opening statement and any questions.
STATEMENT OF KENNETH A. SMITH, SPECIAL AGENT, ICE
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Chairman Souder, Congresswoman
Myrick, Congressman McHenry.
Mrs. Myrick. Pull your mic back. We're having trouble
hearing in the back so everybody needs to talk into the mic.
Mr. Smith. Is that better.
Mrs. Myrick. Yeah.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much for allowing me to testify
before you today to discuss the 287(g) program. I appreciate
your continued support for the Section 287(g) program, which
allows the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to
enter into formal written agreements with State and local
political jurisdictions to train and authorize State and local
law enforcement officers to perform immigration enforcement
functions.
Among the DHS law enforcement agencies, U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement or ICE has the most expansive
investigative authority and the largest force of investigators.
Our mission is to protect our Nation and the American people by
targeting the people, money and materials that support
terrorist and criminal activities. The men and women of ICE
accomplish this by investigating and enforcing the Nation's
immigration and customs laws. ICE recognizes that combating
terrorism and criminal activity is best accomplished through a
multi-agency/multi-authority approach that encompasses Federal,
State, local and tribal resources, skills and expertise.
Sharing information with and providing assistance to our State
and local partners in law enforcement is critical to the
success of DHS and to ensuring the safety of our Nation.
Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act
provides for effective joint initiatives by allowing DHS to
enter into written agreements with State and local
jurisdictions for the purpose of training and authorizing State
and local law enforcement officers to perform immigration
enforcement functions. The Section 287(g) program involves
rigorous, multi-week training that addresses the specific
immigration authorities requested by State and local political
jurisdictions. The training results in individual certification
for each selected law enforcement officer who successfully
completes the program. It also establishes the supervisory
structure over the officers with authority under 287(g) and
prescribes an agreed-upon complaint process governing officer
conduct during the life of the agreement. Properly constructed,
287(g) agreements are a dynamic and highly effective force
multiplier for ICE and local law enforcement as we work to
protect America's communities.
The first Section 287(g) agreement was established in 2002
in Florida, where officials were increasingly concerned about
the number of terrorist-related cases in that State, many of
which involved foreign nationals. This 287(g) agreement was
established with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for
seven Regional Domestic Security Task Forces located throughout
the State. The Florida task forces have initiated more than 200
investigative cases and recorded numerous arrests.
Building on the success of the Florida agreement, ICE and
the State of Alabama signed a written agreement in September
2003 to provide immigration enforcement authority to 21 Alabama
State troopers. These troopers have been certified through the
program and now have the authority to perform immigration
enforcement functions incidental to their normal duties as
patrol officers and at driver's licensing station. They are
also trained and certified to transport and detain aliens
unlawfully present in the United States.
Most recently, ICE entered into agreements in California
with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the San
Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and the Riverside County
Sheriff's Department. We have also entered into agreements with
the Arizona Department of Corrections, and here in North
Carolina with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office. These
agreements provide officers in each of these departments with
statutory authority to perform the function of a Federal
immigration officer in relation to identifying and processing
for removal, under ICE supervision, criminal aliens
incarcerated at their respective correctional facilities. These
recent agreements bring the total number of 287(g) officers
trained by ICE to 159 officers within seven distinct law
enforcement agencies in five States.
These partnerships not only result in the removal of
additional criminal aliens from the United States, but also
allow the limited number of ICE special agents currently
assigned to jail-related duties to focus on more complex
investigations in the field.
Locally the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office and ICE
entered into our agreement in February 2006. Ten deputies and
two sergeants from the Sheriff's Office received Section 287(g)
training in March 2006, graduated, and were certified in April
2006. This partnership has already proven successful. Since
their certification, Mecklenburg County Sheriff's deputies have
identified numerous criminal aliens arrested for violating laws
within Mecklenburg County, and processed them for removal from
the United States.
The ICE Law Enforcement Support Center, the LESC as it's
known, is another long-established initiative that provides a
wealth of information to Federal, State and local law
enforcement personnel. The LESC allows all State and local law
enforcement officers to request information electronically
concerning foreign-born individuals that they encounter during
their normal duties. The LESC is a 24-hour-per-day, 7-day-a-
week law enforcement center that provides comprehensive
immigration--comprehensive immigration status and identity
information about aliens suspected of, arrested for, or
convicted of criminal activity, as well as real-time assistance
to State, local, tribal and international law enforcement
agencies.
ICE has effectively used the LESC to consolidate and
enhance its response to its law enforcement partners seeking
assistance in immigration-related enforcement matters. Since
June 2004 the LESC has placed more than 35,000 ICE immigration
detainers with law enforcement officials in all 50 States and
the District of Columbia.
Most of these immigration detainers were lodged against
individuals with significant criminal histories.
ICE will continue to establish and augment effective
partnerships and information sharing with State and local law
enforcement agencies. Such partnerships are essential to our
mission of deterring criminal alien activity and threats to
national security and public safety. We are grateful for the
many State and local law enforcement officers who assist ICE
daily in our mission and we are pleased to assist them. I'd
like to emphasize that in my three-State area of responsibility
which includes North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia we
cannot effectively accomplish our mission without the daily
interaction of our State and local partners. Thank you again
for inviting me and I will be glad to answer any questions you
may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
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Mr. Souder. OK. I will yield to Vice Chairman McHenry to
start the questioning.
Mr. McHenry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Smith,
for your testimony. I appreciate your perspective. You
mentioned the Law Enforcement Support Center. Can you give us
more details on what exactly you do there and how that's being
utilized.
Mr. Smith. Sure. The Law Enforcement Support Center is just
that. It's a support center located in Burlington, Vermont.
It's staffed 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
It is available to not only ICE agents but to all State and
local law enforcement officers that would like to query an
individual to determine if they're in immigration data bases.
That system is available to them for electronic--electronic
query through the NCIC system.
Mr. McHenry. So all law enforcement are able to access
this.
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir.
Mr. McHenry. And do you have some statistics on how it's
being utilized.
Mr. Smith. It's--It's greatly utilized. I believe
approximately 600,000 queries are made to the LESC every year
from both ICE--ICE agents and State and local officers. In
North Carolina there has been a tremendous increase in the use
of the LESC. I believe to date this fiscal year we had about
2,700 queries from North Carolina law enforcement agencies.
Mr. McHenry. 2,700.
Mr. Smith. 2,700. Out of those 2,700 roughly 300 detainers
have been filed by the LESC with those departments on
individuals that they've queried through the system.
Mr. McHenry. Is there an outreach program to law
enforcement to let them know that this is available to them.
Mr. Smith. There is. Actually the LESC works very closely
with various State agencies responsible for the IT
infrastructure system, the criminal history queries that are
made by each State. I know that there is a training opportunity
coming up in North Carolina. I believe they're doing a
presentation to about 300 operators of that system in North
Carolina this fall.
Mr. McHenry. I also know that North Carolina recently
signed a Fugitive Operations Team or Fugitive--yeah--Fugitive
Operations Team if my memory is correct. Can you describe the
function of that and how that works.
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir. There are two Fugitive Operation Teams
in North Carolina. Those are managed under the control of our
Detention and Removal Section. There is a team in Charlotte
that is fully operational now. There is a team being formed in
Raleigh that is partially operational; will be fully
operational this fall. Their focus is to identify and apprehend
aliens that have an outstanding order of removal from the
United States. Those that are--are immigration fugitives that
have been here already.
Mr. McHenry. And how many folks are on that team? How is
that staffed.
Mr. Smith. I'm not responsible for those teams but I
believe each team is--is eight individuals.
Mr. McHenry. OK. Are there any additional resources that
you need in order to perform your--your job? It's an obvious
question. The answer is yes. If you could elaborate----
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. McHenry [continuing]. On the yes.
Mr. Souder. But I would like to hear it. I have a similar
question; that it seems like an obvious question but although
we can't get that information directly that's partly why we go
out in the field because in Washington the official answer is
no. We don't think that's true. We would like to hear what your
needs are.
Mr. Smith. Obviously our workload is overwhelming and I
think that any Federal, State or local law enforcement official
that you'll ask will always say that they could use more
resources. We do the best that we can with what we have and we
feel that we do a very good job of prioritizing the work that
we are confronted with every day.
Mr. Souder. So will you clarify that.
Mr. McHenry. Yes. That sounds like a Washington answer.
Mr. Smith. Certainly, Congressman, we have plenty of work
and we could keep a large number of individuals very active in
our work. There is no question about that.
Mr. McHenry. Go right ahead.
Mr. Souder. We're not--One of the awkward things in these
kind of hearings is we're not trying to get people in trouble
with their Washington office. Another way to ask the question
is if you had more resources what would you do with them.
Mr. Smith. We--We would continue to prioritize the work
that we do. Our--Our greatest concerns are attacking the
organizations that facilitate illegal immigration, the
smuggling organizations, the trafficking organizations, working
with the county facilities to identify the criminal aliens that
are present in their facilities. We would fully employ all the
resources that were provided to us.
Mr. McHenry. How many folks do you oversee.
Mr. Smith. Approximately 200 in a three-State area.
Mr. McHenry. 200 in a three-State area.
Mr. Smith. Yes.
Mr. McHenry. How many approximate numbers from North
Carolina.
Mr. Smith. Congressman, if I could I would like to address
that after the hearing if we could. Typically for operational
concerns we don't release the number of agents that we have in
any one particular area.
Mr. McHenry. Certainly. So you could use additional
resources.
Mr. Smith. Certainly.
Mr. McHenry. All right.
Mr. Smith. I think we do a good job prioritizing work with
what we have.
Mr. McHenry. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Congresswoman Myrick.
Mrs. Myrick. One question, you know, I don't know if you
can answer or not but I know that 287(g) was signed into law
about 10 years ago and it wasn't until 2002 that the program
started to be utilized and I guess my question is for
historical background do you know why it took so long for it to
get to that point of being used and then since then what's been
happening across the country?
Mr. Smith. I don't. I can speculate that there was
significant changes made obviously after the events of
September 11th in the creation of the Department of Homeland
Security and actually the creation of my agency on Immigration
and Customs Enforcement----
Mrs. Myrick. Right.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. And I think when that occurred we
immediately with Congress's help began looking at ways to do
our job to be as effective as we could possibly be in a variety
of areas and I think 287(g) was one of those things in the law
that had not been, quite frankly, utilized with full success
before that time and after the merger with the Immigration and
Customs Service cross-designating officers--local officers was
nothing new for the Customs Service. We had cross-designated
officers for years to enforce customs laws, Title 19 laws, and
I think it was something we're very comfortable with and I
think part of that also played into the expansion of the
287(g).
Mrs. Myrick. I know that we were recently told that ICE
nationally is doing a contract study on what the needs really
are across the country so I suppose that will give us more
information relative to what needs to be done but, you know,
Congress did authorize a lot of money just recently for 287(g).
I've got $15.5 million for training; $23.1 million for the Law
Enforcement Support Center; $11.4 million for more bed space
for detainees. I guess part of the question is do you think
that's really going to be adequate for the needs? I mean, what
we're seeing all the time is that no matter how much is being
done there really just seems to be more need constantly and now
it's nationally in the interior States as well. You know, are
we ever going to get ahead of this game? And that's part of
what we are trying to find out, you know, from you as to what
the needs are. I mean, you know, where can we go with this
because the public is totally frustrated, we're totally
frustrated, I know you all are totally frustrated and something
has to be done to hit the nail on the head.
Mr. Smith. Well, I can say I believe that the 287(g)
program that has been implemented in Mecklenburg County by
Sheriff Pendergraph and our office here is a model that will be
used around the country. It is a very good program, they've
done an outstanding job of establishing it and I think it will
be mirrored in jurisdictions throughout the country. This
program really is--is in its infancy and I don't think we know
yet how it will be embraced by law enforcement agencies
throughout the country. There are different points of view from
different departments whether or not they will seek the
authority or not and I think we will be prepared to respond to
those agencies that are interested in pursuing the 287(g)
authority.
Mrs. Myrick. You don't have anything to do with the
detention part of--I mean, the bed space part of this issue.
Mr. Smith. No, I don't. We work very closely with Detention
and Removal Operations because their ability to detain aliens
certainly impacts our operational work----
Mrs. Myrick. Right.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. And so we work very closely with
them to coordinate the detention of individuals that we arrest
on criminal investigations or those who have criminal aliens in
the jails.
Mrs. Myrick. Well, that is one of our biggest problems as
you probably know for this area. I just have one more question,
if I may, Mr. Chairman, and I know that Sheriff Pendergraph is
going to testify but he's had cases--I know of one particular
case of an illegal that has been deported 22 times and back in
the country. How many times does an illegal have to be deported
before we take criminal action against them.
Mr. Smith. Well, I believe a minor point of clarification,
oftentimes we will encounter aliens that have been removed and
it's a legal difference really; expedited--I'm sorry--a
voluntary departure. Somebody who is arrested on the Southwest
border and voluntary--voluntarily returns under the law, that
is not a deportation, but we will make a referral to the U.S.
Attorney's Office on each and every re-entry case that we come
across. So every time that we encounter an alien that has been
deported and enters the United States that's a Federal felony
and we make those referrals to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Mrs. Myrick. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. I wanted to pursue a little more in depth about
the questions and let me see if I can sort this through. As
Special Agent in charge in Atlanta you oversee North Carolina,
Georgia and South Carolina? Did I----
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir. The Office of Investigations.
Mr. Souder. And so in your--your regional office you're in
charge of investigations and there is a separate special agent
in charge of deportation.
Mr. Smith. In Atlanta my counterpart is the Director of
Field Operations for Detention and Removal Operations.
Mr. Souder. And that when--This falls directly under the
last question. When somebody is--enters illegally and then
convicted of another crime and then they go back across and
come back in is there a cumulative penalty that's building? In
other words, if--if you investigate a case where somebody has
committed the crime of illegal entry then got arrested on a
DUI, deported, they come back in again on an illegal entry and
then either you pick them up in a--one of your divisions on a
detention and removal or a drug case, a DUI for some reason, do
we have a law of building a cumulative penalty or each time do
they just get penalized for the crime that is in front of us?
In other words, when you have a multiplicity of crimes is there
a disincentive to continue to build your criminal record.
Mr. Smith. I would--I wouldn't be able to respond to the
committee on--specifically to that question. It certainly plays
into the--the decision of the U.S. Attorney's Office on whether
to pursue that case criminally based on the number of re-
entries that an individual may have, the type of crimes they
were previously convicted for and that sort of thing. Re-entry
after deportation again is addressed by the U.S. Attorney's
Office and I'm not sure that the number of previous removals,
whether that factors into the sentencing guidelines that would
be used or not but I can clarify that.
Mr. Souder. Because I understand because there are--
underneath your question--underneath your answer which I
believe also to be accurate from other hearings is that what
you have in effect said is that the U.S. Attorney is relatively
overwhelmed already and, therefore, really can't take all of
these kind of cases so one of the decisions of whether to
prosecute and what level to prosecute is often determined by
how many violations. At hearings, you know, in El Paso multiple
times they don't even detain someone or they weren't detaining
someone until they caught them the 17th time that they've since
had to--they basically gave up for a while, now they're once
again tracking that and it makes it a very difficult problem
for local law enforcement if, in fact, they even go through
this whole process and then we don't have a secure border and
they come back in again and that one of the things we need to
look at legally in addition to as we work through whatever we
do work through on--on work permits or some type of way to work
through with here, clearly your previous record needs to be
part of that and--as well as speaking English; that there are
certain things that need to be part of this negotiation and
it's very troubling that, in fact, that in effect to the
earlier question of you could use more resources, in fact, if--
that suggests probably the U.S. Attorney could use more
resources, we're trying to get--at least we've authorized but
not necessarily appropriated yet adequate resources for
detention facilities because what you're facing here is an
incredible challenge and we're basically shooting with a
peashooter which is what we're talking about, local law
enforcement.
Now let me ask another question. Of the--If you had--You
said you have 200 people working----
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. In three States. If you had
another hundred could they be busy.
Mr. Smith. I believe we could keep another hundred special
agents busy, yes.
Mr. Souder. 200.
Mr. Smith. Impossible for me to say but as you're well
aware the workload can be overwhelming and at what number we
would be--would not be busy any longer, you know, it would only
be an estimate.
Mr. Souder. And in your experience in working--looking at
investigations if there are--anybody who has ever been on the
border knows that we're just wild guessing that there are 10.5
or 12 million. What we know is who we pick up; not who we're
missing. But that's as good a wild guess as there is and if
it's 300,000 to 500,000 in North Carolina basically with
whatever percentage of 200 agents that we're using we're
talking here a focus on--your investigation is focused on
presumably criminal investigations beyond just illegal entry to
the United States, thresholds of drug crimes, other crimes for
deportation, would that be true.
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir. We are responsible for immigration
enforcement as well as enforcement of the customs laws from our
agencies and that would include drug trafficking, drug
smuggling, human trafficking, illegal exports of equipment out
of the United States to other countries. A wide variety of
responsibilities.
Mr. Souder. So, for example, we're not really talking here
about deportation----
[Ms. Foxx enters the room.]
Mr. Souder [continuing]. For illegal immigration because to
get 500,000 people you would need a lot more--even more than
200 agents when they come back. We're really talking here of
how many agents for crimes in addition to illegal entry of what
you need, would that be a fair statement? That when I said
another hundred, another 200 you were talking about a workload,
not just trying----
Mr. Smith. Investigations of criminal aliens, yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. And investigations of criminal aliens by your
definition ICE is not just--is not even predominantly illegal
entry in the United States, it's criminal investigations of
illegal entry plus other things, is that fair to say.
Mr. Smith. It would be a wide variety of things. Our first
concern, obviously our No. 1 priority is national security.
Anything that we can do to deter acts of terrorism is first and
foremost on our agenda. We're very active with our--the Joint
Terrorist Task Forces in all the areas in the three-State area,
we play a key role in that task force, and then public safety.
Those criminal aliens who pose the greatest public safety
threat to the public would be a second part of that.
Mr. Souder. Secretary Chertoff working with Congress has
finally aggressively gone to detainment of OTMs when caught
other than Mexicans. That--Is this being implemented by the
internal part of the Nation as well as the border that there is
a--that if you get an OTM that they're detained as a priority
and not released on their own recognizance to show up of which
92 percent don't show up; the 8 percent who do show up you
wonder about; that the OTMs we understand at the border are now
being held. Is that true in your region if you get tipped off
of an OTM and do you--do you differentiate between an OTM which
would include Guatemala say and the Middle East.
Mr. Smith. It's my--my belief that the differentiation is
based on the underlying--the underlying reason for their
arrest, how they--did they come to our attention; the other
factors, gang members; are they a public threat, are they visa
overstay concerns. Those individuals would be detained. I would
say that over the past 60 days or so there has been a
tremendous effort by not only my office but by the Office of
Detention and Removal or the Office of Investigation in our
area to detain all aliens that we encounter and we've worked
very hard at that over the last 60 days and have detained very
large numbers of aliens.
Mr. Souder. Obviously my question came very close to
profiling which legally is--is hard; however, we do have
countries on a watch list; if you're on a terrorist list, OTMs
from those countries would presumably be a priority. Also
people on watch lists would presumably be a priority and I
wondered as an internal inside the U.S. policy if you get a tip
that there is an OTM in the region and they for whatever reason
have been picked up even if it's just illegal immigration, if
they're an OTM from the country on the watch list or a person
on the watch list presumably we detain them and hold them and
don't release them on the street.
Mr. Smith. We refer to that as--to those individuals as
special interest aliens----
Mr. Souder. People of special interest.
Mr. Smith [continuing]. And that would be accurate.
Mr. Souder. And do you have adequate detention facilities
for those.
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder. And have you had many persons of interest in
your region.
Mr. Smith. Certainly in our three-State area with the
population that we have we often encounter special interest
aliens.
Mr. Souder. And do you sense that most of those come
through the Southwest border.
Mr. Smith. I would have to--I couldn't respond directly to
that for my area but certainly the Southwest border isn't the
only threat. Visa overstays, individuals that come here legally
but overstay their visa would be another problem.
Mr. Souder. In the higher-risk population what percentage
would you say are visa overstays? Half? Just ballpark. I'm not
going to--We're not going to hold you to it because a lot of
people think of this as just a border question. The visa
overstays are emerging from these hearings as a major problem
particularly in higher-risk areas where they're not in direct
employment questions.
Mr. Smith. I feel comfortable in saying without having
those numbers immediately available to me that the majority
would be overstays.
Mr. Souder. And the--I think at this point our Congress--
another member of our subcommittee, Congresswoman Virginia
Foxx, is--is here. She had when she was first introduced to the
Republican Conference my favorite introduction of any member
that there ever was from Cass Ballenger from North Carolina as
a spirited mountain woman. Would you like to make any comments.
Ms. Foxx. I have a statement but you're doing such a good
job, Chairman Souder, that I think you ought to continue and I
just want to say thank you for coming and it's obvious from the
crowd here that there is a great deal of interest in this area
and I want to thank Congresswoman Myrick and Congressman
McHenry for organizing this meeting.
I do have a statement I'll give a little later but you're
doing a great job and I think you ought to continue.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Let me just ask a few more questions
but first I understand that basically----
Mrs. Myrick. Mark, you need to use the microphone.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. That I--There is a little
feedback, too, so it's kind of a double----
Mrs. Myrick. Yes. That's true.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. That--and I appreciate very much
the work ICE is doing. You're in an incredible politically
difficult situation because here in North Carolina like Indiana
it's not clear where we even meet our employment--so you're
getting pressure from both ends, pressures on profiling, lack
of adequate staff, lack of detention beds, a frustration among
agents that if you actually make your case and get somebody
deported they come right back in. It's an incredibly
frustrating process. Nevertheless, it's something that clearly
you cannot have security in the United States until we do this.
We have a huge change of individuals in the United States that
we don't know who they are, we don't know what it means in our
political system or economic system and it's a huge challenge
and that's what we're trying to sort through. This isn't meant
to be critical of ICE but we're trying to zero in----
Mr. Smith. Absolutely.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. On your particular needs that--I'm
still--Of the--How often do you when you work a deportation
case through an ICE investigation on narcotics, on other
criminal activity that--how often do you see after the person
has served that you run into the same person again and they're
an illegal.
Mr. Smith. That's difficult--difficult to say and obviously
it does occur but we've been very active, for example, in--in
the entire three-State area but particularly here in North
Carolina with our Community Shield Program where we've
aggressively addressed the transnational gang problem and I
think we have arrested and removed somewhere near 400 gang
members since the initiation of the program in May 2005 and
using that as a--that program as a gauge I know that we have
encountered some gang members that have re-entered but it--
surprisingly it is not a tremendously large number. We have not
seen a great deal of that in that particular segment of our
work.
Mr. Souder. Now in the particular State and local law
enforcement training do you find that there is more demand for
this program than you are able to have trainers at this point.
Mr. Smith. The--The expansion of the program to--to areas
such as Mecklenburg County there is no question it is a great
force multiplier; it's a great program. It does add additional
responsibilities to our current staff in our office. So, yes,
the program does add additional work--an additional workload to
our office. We believe that workload is--is time well spent by
our--by our agents and managers because of the return on the
investment.
Mr. Souder. So there is two questions here. Actually my
question is more related to if more departments wanted to train
personnel do you have adequate staff to train them but you also
said the additional part of this is when you train them they
detain more people and then you have more detention and removal
work and the U.S. Attorney has more work as well, which we need
to make sure we address in Congress but if you could also
answer the question if every county in North Carolina suddenly
said that they wanted to be cross-trained how would you meet
that need.
Mr. Smith. That would be difficult. The--The--Really two
issues. The training for the program is a separate issue and
handled centrally, if you will, coordinated by our
headquarters. They provide the trainers and the material and
the dates for classes would be coordinated by--by our
headquarters and done centrally, not--not by our individual
offices. The--Where it does impact us is the oversight role
that our agents play and our supervisors play working jointly
with the local and county officers that are involved in that--
that program.
Obviously if we encounter more aliens and process more
aliens for deportation the workload goes up and, again, that--
as you mentioned that goes to everyone involved in the process,
the Deportation and Removal Division, the U.S. Attorney's
Office, the Immigration Court.
Mr. Souder. And I know this is a dicey question and I hope
will ask--this will be my last and see if any of my colleagues
would like to ask any additional questions--that--that
presumably you have--certainly the U.S. Attorneys have to have
thresholds of cases that they'll say--you alluded to that
earlier--we don't particularly want to announce precisely what
those thresholds are because what we have found is that when
the threshold is announced on how much narcotics then everybody
gets like one pound less, that--that you--but there are
thresholds here but when State and local law enforcement which
is already financially strapped make these cases I'm sure one
of the frustrations that we're going to have is increasingly
people hear this heavily in Arizona and increasingly in Texas
and New Mexico as well when we hold hearings in those areas
that local law enforcement will take the initiative and then
the Federal agents won't do anything about it. That given the
fact that your thresholds are going to be very high and that
while you didn't say you were underfunded because you're being
as efficient as you can with the resources that you have
suggested that you could use double even, keep your people
busy, and that would still be a threshold question with the
U.S. Attorney's Office, is do State and local law enforcement
get any reimbursement for detention? Do they get any
reimbursement if the local prosecutor--can the local prosecutor
handle this type of thing? Do we need a supplementary strategy
that if--a legal strategy that if a local community wants to
impose a lower threshold than the Federal strategy guidelines
that somehow we address some kind of assistance with that
because you're unlikely--if you only have a few communities
around the United States that are tapping into this depending
on their local politics those communities are going to
disproportionately influence the regional office. For example,
Georgia around Atlanta has--the district has at least the same
pressure that's in this area but if his local political
situation hasn't done that you could have all your ICE
investigations in someone over here and the question is do we
need a supplemental strategy for things that don't meet the
Federal threshold?
Mr. Smith. As it develops I certainly think that is an area
that will need to be looked at. I think the goal of the program
really is--is two-pronged. One certainly would be to identify
those criminal aliens that would be subject to additional
criminal prosecution but as we are doing in Mecklenburg County
the real beauty of the program is that it identifies and
provides an encounter with a trained cross-immigration official
to every formal individual that enters that facility so it
allows us to begin that process which would not have
necessarily a huge impact on the criminal system, the legal
system; it certainly would on our Detention and Removal
capabilities, but really two-pronged, but I think you're
correct in that the more individuals that we encounter the
greater pressure we're going to place on--on criminal leads
also.
Mrs. Myrick. I know you said you don't want to answer this
publicly but I do afterwards want to talk to you because I want
to know how many agents are in North Carolina. We continually
appropriate money in Congress for North Carolina for people and
they are routinely kept in the Atlanta office and we don't get
them so just if you will be so kind as to share that with me
privately I would appreciate it and thanks for being here.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Ms. Foxx. I would like to--I have an interest in what
you're saying about--and I like to use the word education
instead of training in terms of educating local law enforcement
people to help expand what you're doing and I--I appreciate
what the chairman said. We hear a lot of criticism of the
agency not doing all that it should be doing but we realize
there are many frustrations that you all have in trying to get
your job done. I have some ideas I think on ways that we could
expand the programs that you have for educating local law
enforcement people and one question that came to my mind that
hasn't come up before, it seems to me that the ICE folks have
certain kind of education that they go through. Do you see that
there are skills that the local law enforcement people have
that are particularly valuable in the work that you need to do?
It would seem to me that the combination of the two but aren't
they having some skills particularly in dealing with the
criminal element that perhaps aren't there in the education
programs that the ICE people have.
Mr. Smith. Well, absolutely, there is no question that we
rely heavily on our day-to-day partnerships with local law
enforcement and it's critical to--to our work. I have been in
Federal law enforcement for over 20 years and developed just
such outstanding relationships with--with State and local
officers because they are what--what we depend on to get our
job done whether it be in an investigation of criminal
immigration investigation or--or customs, we--we rely very
heavily on them. They're key partners certainly.
Ms. Foxx. Mr. Chairman, I don't know--I'm sure all of you
all have done opening statements and I have an opening
statement to make but I want to share an idea that I've--has
come to me as a result of reading over the material and
preparing for today's meeting that I want to explore in some
depth not just with Mr. Smith today but I hope that the
chairman and others will work with me on. I'm a former
community college president and as I was reading the material
and talk--thinking about this issue of how we can do a better
job of collaboration and coordination between and among local
and State law enforcement people and the ICE folks it occurred
to me that we are not utilizing a fabulous system and resource
that we have particularly in the State of North Carolina that
I'm familiar with but it's really a resource throughout the
country and that's the community college system.
Our law enforcement agents in the State of North Carolina
and especially--are primarily getting their education and their
training through the community colleges and I--I'm proposing
that we utilize our community college system to expand the
program accessibility. You mentioned that the program now is a
central program and it's not a very expensive program in the
sense of it costs now about $520 for the materials for somebody
to go to the program but it's a 5-week program and if people
have to go to a central location and either stay there 5 weeks
and travel back home during that time it's got to be a very
expensive program. And it would seem to me that we could really
expand our capabilities for a fairly small amount of money in
the grand scheme of things by being able to provide certified
educators from ICE to go into the community college system and
provide this curriculum to what--to do a trainers program or an
educate-the-educators program and then be able to offer those
programs through the community college system and it would seem
to me that even could be integrated into the criminal justice
programs that exist and every community college I believe in
the State of North Carolina does some form of basic law
enforcement education and it either has a criminal justice
program or is affiliated with one of the community colleges
that does, and I think that we need to investigate how we might
be able to present a model program in the State of North
Carolina that could then be used by community colleges all
across the country but I'd like for my colleagues and I to
explore this possibility of doing that. It is bound to be
useful as a possibility but particularly, again, to provide
that certification close to home and help us be able to help
you more than we're able to do that and also, again, make it
very affordable. So I'm going to make a formal proposal to the
chairman again and to--to my colleagues that we look into that
possibility and work with the community college system in North
Carolina and with the people who administer your centrally
administered program to see what we might be able to do.
Mr. Smith. Yes, ma'am. And I should clarify for the
committee. The program is managed centrally by--administered at
the local level near where the department is located but
certainly, I think you're right, it's interesting and we can
pursue that.
Mr. Souder. I want to--I have spent an incredible amount of
time on this issue on the border as narcotics chairman then
last fall we did so-called community hearings for 8 weeks in a
row arguing about how we planned to do this policy and I'm an
aggressive border enforcement, aggressive English, aggressive
secure I.D. but struggling with the work permit question
because Indiana, my district, would dry up and blow away right
now if we actually ordered that done but if we actually get--
companies would just move to Mexico--that--before losing their
business to China--and working this out is a huge challenge but
I have been very troubled as we get in to talk about how we
would actually do work permits because most companies who are
hiring illegals are not doing direct job hires. It's often day
bidders for dry wall, motels increasingly contract out their
cleaning services, those cleaning services then do temp
services. Much of this is in the underground economy; people
who work as plumbers' assistants who aren't being reported as
income in the first place.
Now if Congress somehow under pressure from the President
in the next 30 days would pass a work permit bill you are the
agency that would have to enforce this and there are all of a
sudden 200,000 people here in North Carolina with work permits
and you are already telling me that over half of the people
here that you deal with in investigations are visa overstays.
How in the world without an incredible number of agents would
you ever enforce work permits?
And--And I don't think we've even raised this subject.
I'm on the Work Force Committee and Subcommittee in Energy
and Work Force; I've never even heard anybody address this
question because we've all focused on the border. But if your
No. 1 challenge is visa overstays what--how would you do this?
Are you--Have you even been having an internal discussion at
ICE in Investigations and in Detention and Removal of what you
would do if suddenly Congress in the next 30 days gives you 10
or 12 million people with work permits with the promise to the
American people that it's going to be a limited time period and
once their permit is over you're going to deport them?
Mr. Smith. I know that issue is of significant concern to
Assistant Secretary Myers who at the headquarters level and
policy level has been looking into different scenarios of how
we would support the program and what challenges we would face
potentially as a result of that. I have not been involved in
any of those meetings but can certainly pursue that for the
committee. I think as----
Mr. Souder. Because that would in effect Federalize all the
crime. In other words, a visa overstay is a Federal crime, not
a local crime. A work permit overstay would be a Federal crime
and you would be dealing with hundreds of thousands. How many--
Do you do right now in investigations 500 a year.
Mr. Smith. I don't have that number available, sir, but I
would certainly----
Mr. Souder. Like how many investigations currently could
you even handle, and we'll ask a similar question to Detention
and Removal for the hearing record, because the scale of this
would have to be done exponentially and this would need to be
calculated or a budget calculation--I've seen all kinds of
budget estimates but never this question of work permit
overstay or how you enforce it because I have been talking to
my RV manufacturers and others and saying: Look, if you get a
work permit here, you know, how are the employers going to know
if a person goes to North Carolina from Indiana on the work
permit; somebody has to track that because you could do--if
it's a 5-year work permit it's 5 years in North Carolina and 5
years over in Indiana that--how do we do this? Because this
potentially in your department--I mean, 200 people. My lands.
Mr. Smith. As a law enforcement officer, sir, I certainly
agree that any movement in that direction significant
consideration has to be given to counterfraud measures; how we
anticipate responding to the attempts to subvert the program.
Mr. Souder. Are coyotes a current priority because that
would become a bigger problem here, too. Coyotes would be the
people who put the packages together who recruit the people who
come across to provide the transportation from the border. A
lot of the businesses in the United States are actually willing
to pay back the people who--sometimes $8 to $12,000 for a full
package into the job site which the $8 to $12,000 which we have
testimony from Julie Myers as well as former Assistant
Secretary Garcia, that was $8 to $12,000 for a Mexican, up to
$30,000 for someone from a Middle Eastern country; that's all
been testimony, not classified, that would include the full
thing, including an illegal green card and the transportation
and overnight to make sure he got in. Testimony at a hearing
recently in the Southwest suggested it was like $300 if you got
yourself to the border, $300 to $500 to get yourself to the
other side of the border and then sometimes you contract then,
sometimes then you have a separate agent who is giving you a
green card and providing you with a job and housing as you line
that up. Is that a primary part of your investigation right
now, creating networks?
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir, it is. And it is one of the areas that
we've worked I think very creatively in and that is following
the money trail which we have done for years in our drug
investigations, money laundering investigations but we're now
applying that to our immigration, alien smuggling
investigations, that sort of thing; it's been very effective.
So following the money is key to any criminal activity and
we're certainly applying that in this area. I would like to
clarify one thing. I think I responded to the question about--
regarding special interest aliens saying that I believe or it
was my opinion that the majority of special interest aliens
that we encounter are visa over- stays. Not all of the
individuals that we encounter. I limit that to the special
interest aliens.
Mr. Souder. Yes, sir. That was my understanding it was a
special interest which is obviously the highest target but what
we--what my understanding is from our Washington testimony is a
fair percentage of others are also visa over- stays, often day-
visit overstays along the border, student visa overstays,
vacation overstays. Looking at the desk in Venezuela, looking
at narcotics issues in those areas that often they're coming to
Disney World and we have to make adjustment. Are they really
coming to Disney World and then jumping visa or are they coming
to Disney World? It was amazing. One day at the Venezuela desk
40 percent of the people that day coming for a visa had an
invitation to an insurance conference at Disney World and many
were turned down but a number of them came with kids and they
were let in and they thought they were really going to Disney
World. Of course, you can get kids for hire, too. It is a
huge--And we have these people that are literally in U.S.
protection, is based on that visa desk to the degree that they
come in legally. Now in Mexico as Jay Leno says: Just follow
the person in front of you. So it's a little bit different type
challenge but as we look at even the formal process that's why
we get visa overstays, we've seen a drop in our college
attendance; we try to tighten this and it's hurt us because
many of these students from around the world who would go back
home now are less supportive of America in their countries
because they're not spending time here.
There are consequences if we tighten too close. On the
other hand, the visa jumps are a huge challenge to us right now
and the OTMs are the highest risk part of that. Any other
questions? Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for
your willingness to come today and field our questions. We may
have some additional written questions and obviously the
members have some questions about regional things that they
would like to talk to you about privately.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. If our second panel could come forward we're
going to take a very quick break. My family is going to need to
figure out where they are.
[Recess.]
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come to order. We're
going to try holding the microphone so that the people upstairs
can hear better and if each of the witnesses could do that,
too, when you testify, if you hold that the feedback problem
that we had, it will help everybody hear better. Our second
panel is the Honorable Alan Cloninger, sheriff of Gaston
County; the Honorable Michael Lands, district attorney of
Gaston County; the Honorable Jim Pendergraph, sheriff of
Mecklenburg County and Ms. Emily Moose. As you heard as an
oversight committee it is our standard practice to swear in all
of our witnesses so if you'll each stand and raise your right
hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that each of the witnesses
responded in the affirmative. It would be really embarrassing
if we had to prosecute anybody here for perjury so--It's a
little interesting footnote, Mark McGwire would have been the
third one in I believe. He didn't want to talk about the past
but in an oversight committee that's what we do, we talk about
the past, and try to figure out how to address the future. It
took us--you'll appreciate this--3 days to serve his subpoena
because he wouldn't come voluntarily and he moved cities to try
to avoid coming before Congress to give testimony. Rafael
Palmeiro isn't being prosecuted for perjury, although he spent
2 months trying to--when he said he didn't use steroids and
then we found out that he flunked his test. The only reason he
isn't sitting in jail is that we couldn't establish precisely
whether he was on a steroid at the time that he said it or
whether the--because he only had to test and apparently that
was post hearing but hopefully we won't run into that with
sheriffs and U.S. (sic) Attorneys and Ms. Moose so--but it
makes our committee interesting from time to time.
You've heard from our first panel and some of our concerns
at the Federal level and now one of the unique things that we
get in the field hearing is to be able to hear from people
right on the front lines who are dealing with this day to day
in their home environments and at length which is really
unusual today and we have four Members of Congress here and I
appreciate the North Carolina delegation being here and we look
forward to each of your testimony. We'll start with you,
Sheriff Cloninger.
STATEMENT OF ALAN CLONINGER, SHERIFF, GASTON COUNTY
Mr. Cloninger. Thank you, sir. On behalf of Gaston County,
welcome to all of you being here today.
Mr. Souder. If you can pick up your mic. One other thing I
should say, we have a clock for 5 minutes. You knew that the--
there is a 5-minute--it's a take-down----
Mr. Cloninger. Yeah. It's----
Mr. Souder [continuing]. That we--in a field hearing we
won't hold you close to it but it gives us some--some idea when
we--particularly when we come to the South we do the 5-minutes
for the Southern drawl so we'll be very flexible with that
clock but it kind of gives us an idea.
Mr. Cloninger. I promise I won't be that long-winded. Here
in Gaston County last year we booked 640 nationals from 45
different countries into the Gaston County Jail. Last November
I met with Sheriff Pendergraph and we discussed the very issues
that are coming up today and at that time we discussed this
program, the 287(g) program, and he informed me that he was in
the process of obtaining it with the help of Representative
Myrick. I also talked to Ms. Myrick and expressed my interest
in this; that we were going to wait until after Jim got it
through to get it started. Then in February I applied for the
program and finished the application and we--with the
chairman's permission I would like to deviate from my statement
to make a little announcement. Representative Myrick, thank you
for attending the hearing. Thank you because as of yesterday
the Gaston County Sheriff's Office has been approved for the
287(g) program and we will be starting it within the next 60 to
90 days. So I appreciate it.
We look forward to this partnership with ICE and I have to
be--I would be remiss if I didn't compliment Jeff Jordan--he
said he was going to leave--the ICE agent from Charlotte. With
his help and guidance we were able to do this. So thank you. It
will make a difference here in Gaston County because I
understand from Sheriff Pendergraph it has already made a
difference in Mecklenburg. And so in that deviation I'll just
drop on down because I was talking about needing the program
and I've already got it. But the two issues that remain after
that I think we have to be aware of is the cost and expense. I
don't know what the cost and expense of operating a program in
Gaston County would be and I haven't asked for any money there
yet. We've got to see it first before that. But there may be a
cost and expense that you may--not may but you should help us
with because it is our taxpayers who are helping enforce this
Federal law.
Also the other side is the jail side. In Gaston County
right now our jail is pretty much getting full and when we
start getting these folks we're going to have to hold them;
hold them somewhere. So you may look at ways, as I said in my
statement, of maybe helping us fund expanding the Gaston County
Jail so we have more bed space for these people; how to get the
space locally. We don't have some other jail that you can use.
We will need financial assistance particularly with the
detention side because after talking with Sheriff Pendergraph
his numbers are rather high already. So those two areas I think
will be something that we will come back to you in this
partnership with you which will do great good in this county
and I think across the country. It's not only the illegal alien
issue but the Homeland Security issue we have to be aware of so
thank you for partnering with us and I'll turn it over to Mr.
Lands.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cloninger follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.015
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much. Mr. Lands.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL LANDS, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, GASTON COUNTY
Mr. Lands. I am Michael Lands. I'm the elected District
Attorney for Gaston County and I'm responsible for prosecuting
all the criminal cases in Gaston County. Thanks for the
opportunity to come and address you. What are some of the
issues and problems that illegal immigrants charged with
criminal offenses cause for a local court system.
Well, one is the issue of identity. Is the person arrested
who he said he is. Without proper identification and birth
dates it's hard to know a defendant's true identity. Jails are
not big enough to hold all the immigrants arrested without
valid identification. We have numerous cases where an arrestee
uses another person's name and does not appear in court. The
warrant for arrest goes out in the original name and it's hard
to know whether we'll ever arrest the true offender in those
cases. Another identity issue is the fact that many illegal
immigrants have several last names or hyphenated names that
make it difficult to run record checks to see if an immigrant
has a prior criminal record. And a final identity issue occurs
because illegal immigrants move around so often it is difficult
to know if a conviction in one State is for the same defendant
charged in this State.
A different issue is the fact that illegal immigrants will
owe the person who helped them get into this country and that
may mean that they get involved in criminal activity such as
transporting drugs for them. Next you have the issue about the
fact that increased illegal immigrants in the State impact the
State court system economically.
It means the jail is overcrowded, it means that there needs
to be more State-appointed attorneys, it means there needs to
be more translators for the court system. And then there's what
I call the psychological issue, particularly when you're
dealing with drunk driving deaths. All drunk driving deaths
could be avoided if there is no alcohol consumption by the
driver. Everybody understands that.
When an American-born drunk driver kills someone in a crash
the public feels the death could have been avoided. I believe
the public has greater outrage when an illegal immigrant drunk
driver kills because people believe the death would have been
avoided. They believe if the illegal immigrant was not in this
country they would not have drank and driven and killed in this
country.
And a final issue is the problem of the illegal victim of
crime. They are targeted by criminals who know the illegal
immigrant will not report the crime to the police.
If someone is actually charged in that case then they don't
cooperate with the prosecutors in order to prosecute the person
and so then this--these actions allow criminals to go free and
waste valuable court resources. Most of this non-cooperation
can be traced to a fear of deportation and a cultural distrust
of police.
On the issue of the 287(g) training I believe it certainly
would help local law enforcement to be able to determine who
was an illegal immigrant and be able to start the process of
deportation. It would be a great help to local law enforcement
to be able to get a known immigrant criminal out of the
community without having to wait for an overworked ICE agent to
begin the process. As long as the Federal Government does not
make the 287(g) authority an unfunded mandate for local law
enforcement agencies, then I believe more and more local
agencies may seek to have their officers trained. North
Carolina also needs an immigration court here to be able to
timely and effectively have deportation hearings for illegal
immigrants found in North Carolina.
But ultimately--and I mean no disrespect--this is a Federal
problem. You have to address it. Illegal immigration is
Federal--is a Federal Government problem. Why are we talking
about having 287(g) authority? Because the Federal Government
has not employed enough ICE agents to do the job. And what is
the Federal Government's policy on deportation? That's going to
have to be communicated to the officers who are trained under
the 287(g) authority. For instance, as I understand any illegal
alien in this country would be subject to deportation but it
seems like the policy of the Federal Government is to wait
until they create--commit a State crime and then determine if
that State crime is serious enough for deportation before any
action is taken. If a local law enforcement agency has 287(g)
authority is everybody going to be equally deportable if they
determine who they are? And that's something you'll have to
decide.
Finally, it strikes me as strange that we're having all of
this discussion about enforcement and giving authority for
deportation and what crimes will be deportable when we all
know, and this was stated earlier, we go through all the work
of deportation, send them to their home country and 2 weeks
later they're back. So the Federal Government is going to have
to address that issue. Is the Federal Government going to
decide that's going to be an offense that they're willing to
imprison people over for substantial periods of time or are we
just going to go through a revolving-door deportation process
again? Thanks for this opportunity to address you and I
appreciate it.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lands follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T6029.018
Mr. Souder. Sheriff Pendergraph.
STATEMENT OF JIM PENDERGRAPH, SHERIFF, MECKLENBURG COUNTY
Mr. Pendergraph. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity
to speak to you today and Sheriff Cloninger had a couple of
minutes left over, I may need those, but please don't be too
hard on me. My name is Jim Pendergraph, Sheriff of Mecklenburg
County, North Carolina for the past 12 years. I have been in
law enforcement for the past 36 years. First, again, let me
express my appreciation for the opportunity to appear before
this Commission on Empowering Local Law Enforcement to Combat
Illegal Immigration. I probably will never have another
opportunity to address Members of Congress on this very serious
and controversial subject. It is with all due respect that I
make my comments, so please excuse me for being blunt.
I strongly support the Office of the President of the
United States and President Bush. However, I, and many others,
strongly disagree with President Bush's policy, or lack of, on
illegal immigration. The Congress of the United States has let
us down by the lack of action on the illegal immigration issue
for decades, leaving those of us responsible for local law
enforcement to deal with not only the fall-out of the criminal
element, but the ire of the public for their perception of our
inaction on a Federal issue.
Mine is one of the few sheriff's offices, and thank
goodness Sheriff Cloninger has his approved, in the United
States that has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the 287(g) program.
After extensive training, 12 of my deputies are certified under
this program to screen illegal immigrants arrested in
Mecklenburg County. This certification gives us access to ICE
data bases of fingerprints and photographs, which is the only
real method of positively identifying a person and their
immigration status. Most law enforcement agencies in this
country are trying to identify the legal status of an
individual by telephoning the Law Enforcement Support Service
Center in Vermont and submitting the name of a person in
question. This is virtually worthless and a waste of time. I
know it is shocking, but people lie to law enforcement about
their names and use names of persons who are in this country
legally. This past February I had lunch in Washington, DC, with
a group of chiefs and sheriffs from the largest law enforcement
agencies in the United States.
I informed one of the chiefs of police of my recent
agreement with ICE to screen illegal aliens and deport them if
they fit the criteria. His comments to me were: Congratulations
and best of luck. I envy what you are doing but I'd have to
turn in my resignation the same day I signed such an MOU. It is
not politically correct to cross local business that uses the
cheap labor. Ladies and gentlemen, this political correctness
will eventually be the downfall of this country if someone
doesn't wake up.
Mr. Souder. I've tried to be a little flexible. We do not
have demonstration support. You are invited to observe; not to
participate. It's not a statement whether I agree or disagree
with that but we need to have order in the hearing.
Mr. Pendergraph. I didn't mean that.
Mr. McHenry. You did mean that.
Mr. Pendergraph. Well, I didn't mean them to do that.
My office started the immigration screening for persons
arrested on May 1, 2006. My jail population for illegal
immigrants has grown from 2 percent to over 15 percent in the
last 3 years. We have so many new arrestees to process, we have
not been able to process the 350 inmates suspected of being
illegal, that were already in the jail on May the 1st. As we
suspected, the vast majority of immigrants arrested and
processed are in this country illegally. Infrequently, we find
a legal resident arrested, but they are rare since they are
very protective of their legal status. More than half of the
screened illegals have detainers for deportation placed on them
immediately, either for past removals from this country or for
the seriousness of the crime they are accused of. The first
week we were processing, we came across an individual who had
been removed from this country 22 times. His last deportation
was from the Arizona Department of Corrections back to Mexico,
and he was arrested a short time later in Charlotte for
trafficking methamphetamine. Again, the majority of the people
detainers are placed upon have been deported multiple times.
The ones not held for deportation are cited for an immigration
hearing in Atlanta which they--most of them never show up for
any immigration court and that's why we need one in Charlotte.
So many illegal immigrant criminals have been identified
through my 287(g) program, it is causing me a jail space
problem. One of the agreements with ICE in the beginning was
for their removal of the identified offenders as soon as
possible. I don't think even they foresaw the numbers we would
be dealing with. The Removal and Detention Division of ICE is
overwhelmed by the numbers we are generating for removal in
Mecklenburg County alone.
In the last year I have come to know and work very closely
with the ICE employees in my area. I suspect the public would
be outraged to know how few ICE agents are assigned to North
Carolina. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jeff Jordan, and
SAC Ken Smith that was just here from Atlanta, have literally
bent over backward to make this 287(g) program work. They are
as dedicated and professional people as I've ever worked with
in my 36-year law enforcement career. However, they are as
frustrated as I am with their lack of resources, and the
frequent dealings with the same people they just removed from
this country only a few days prior.
I attended a meeting at the White House 2 months ago on
June 21st with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and ICE
Director Julie Myers. The IACP, Major County Sheriffs'
Association, National Sheriffs' Association, Major City Chiefs
and other groups representing local law enforcement, stressed
that border security was the No. 1 issue that needs to be
addressed by Congress. Another issue that I brought to the
Attorney General's attention is the common practice by State
and Federal prosecutors to dismiss criminal cases if an illegal
immigrant agrees to voluntary removal. The illegal criminal
immigrants know our system and how it works better than most of
us do. This in effect wipes the slate clean for a criminal,
gives him or her a free ride home at taxpayer expense to visit
family, and then begin the journey back to the United States to
victimize other citizens. Think of the frustration we feel when
a group of illegals leaves my jail for deportation and they
smile and say: We'll see you next week. One of the main
purposes for our meeting with the Attorney General was for him
to promote the 287(g) program and to request everyone to become
part of it. Most Chiefs of Police are not interested in this
program for various reasons; the main one being it is not
politically correct and is viewed as a Federal problem. Most
sheriffs, because they are elected, would like to be part of
the 287(g) program but ICE administrators admit they have
nowhere near the resources to support that many MOUs. ICE
agents in North Carolina could not handle the workload if one-
fourth of the North Carolina sheriffs signed an MOU with ICE
for the 287(g) program. I can tell you for a fact that had it
not been for Representative Myrick that I talk with more than
my own sister I probably would not have my program operating
now. She's been wonderful helping me with my problems.
I firmly believe we are just seeing the beginning of
problems surrounding illegal immigration. This country was
built on laws and I took an oath many years ago to enforce the
law and protect our citizens from all enemies, foreign or
domestic. I take that oath seriously.
The average citizen has no idea what illegal immigration
issues costs us in infrastructure tax dollars. These include
the criminal justice system, hospital emergency rooms, County
Departments of Social Services, schools, etc. A recent report
from the Mecklenburg Health Department stated that the County
spent $400,000 last fiscal year for interpreters for people who
could speak little or no English that were seeking health
services. The County's Health Director predicts that in less
than 5 years, fully 20 percent of the children starting school
in Mecklenburg County will be children of illegal immigrant
parents with little or no English skills.
I have nothing against immigrants and this country was
built with and by immigrants looking for a better way of life.
The flood of illegal immigrants crossing our southern border
expecting citizenship and all the privileges that come with it
is a slap in the face to every other immigrant who went through
the legal process and did it the right way. Even though I have
great concern for the flood of illegals coming here looking for
a better way of life, my bigger concern is for those crossing
our porous borders looking to cause harm and commit acts of
terrorism against the United States. This is a serious Homeland
Security issue.
I have just scratched the surface of issues we face every
day just dealing with illegal immigrants committing crimes in
our community. Thank you for the opportunity to testify before
this Commission and may God bless America and help Congress
come to a quick resolution on this issue.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pendergraph follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you very much. Ms. Moose, it's great to
hear from you directly. Sometimes I think--you can pass that
microphone.
Mr. Pendergraph. Excuse me.
Mr. Souder. Sometimes you wonder--people say that we're
doing all of this illegal immigration stuff because it's a
political year and you always--anybody who is in political life
people wonder about your motives, whether you just say one
thing and do another, but Congresswoman Myrick started to
buttonhole members about your case immediately. You just need
to know it wasn't just back here and it wasn't just that she
was moving a bill. Quite frankly to be honest I heard probably
more about your case than I wanted to hear about your case
that--because we all have variations of this but it was such an
emotional thing in how it affected her that she immediately
started talking to a number of us, introduced a bill, worked
that bill and had a passion with it and that's why I say it's
of special interest to me because I--I heard about your case so
many different times in a short form that I'm looking forward
to hearing from you directly so we can get it into the official
record of the United States what happened, what it means at a
personal level in this rather than just the hypothetical level
with lots of numbers and in general. So thank you for being
willing to share a very difficult and personal story with us.
STATEMENT OF EMILY MOOSE, MOTHER OF SCOTT GARDNER
Ms. Moose. Thank you. The Charlotte Observer headlines on
July 20, 2005, read simply: Scott Gardner did not have to die.
My name is Emily Moose and following Sheriff Pendergraph here
I've been a mother for 35 years and a grandmother for 7 years.
But more importantly who was Scott? Scott Gardner was a
husband, a father, a son, a brother, a teacher, a coach and a
friend. He taught and he inspired. He was a devoted husband and
a father and he was definitely the anchor in his family. Scott
was a tall, good-looking fellow with blonde hair and intense
brown eyes. He was a gentle giant with a soft voice. He loved
his children with abandon and the game he loved was baseball.
He was steadfast and loyal, freely giving unconditional
love. Scott was a proud man. This pride was in who he was and
what he stood for. Scott was a devoted Christian. His
evangelism was a live by faith example which drew people to him
and in this drawing he made clear his faith in his God and his
acceptance of Christ as his personal Savior.
On July 16, 2005, Scott and his beautiful wife Tina were
traveling on Highway 130 in Brunswick County, North Carolina on
their way to the coast for a long overdue family vacation.
Their two small children were safely secured in the back seat
of the family station wagon and all of a sudden out of nowhere
they were hit head-on by a truck. Nine hours later my precious
son lost his life and his wife Tina was seriously injured. Tina
remains in a vegetative State today. She is being cared for in
a nursing facility in North Carolina. Scott Gardner was 33
years old and his wife Tina is 32.
It has been 13 months since that horrible day and our
family has never overcome this nightmare. As the time goes on
our pain and our loss grows greater. Our questions as to why
have never been answered. Our disbelief that something like
this could happen in our country and our frustration with a
failed and broken system that cost us the ultimate price is
mounting. Since my son's murder I have studied and I've read,
and I suffer the personal pain of the tragic ramifications
caused by the illegal invasion of my country. In the last
several months I've travelled to Raleigh, I've been to
Columbia, I've been to Washington. I have written and e-mailed
thousands and thousands of letters, made hundreds of telephone
calls looking for answers to this deadly problem.
There were four young men in the truck that day that struck
Scott and Tina head-on and every one of them were in this
country illegally. After the crash happened, in spite of my
babies crying and my son screaming to get out of the car, these
men fled the scene in order to elude the police. They removed
their clothing and they buried it in order to escape possible
DNA that might prove who the driver of that truck was. They all
claimed not to speak or to understand English even though a lot
of people in their own community said that they do speak and
understand the language. Investigators later found out that the
truck that was involved in this accident--or accident--crime
was owned by another Hispanic fellow in their community. This
particular man owns 30 such vehicles. He provides little to no
insurance on these vehicles and he leases them to undocumented
and unlicensed drivers. The man that was driving the truck was
described to me by his sister as a good man. This good man
ignored the screams of my children and my son and ran away from
his car. After the fact our family learned that man had been
arrested five times in 5 years prior to that horrible day. One
of the prior charges resulted in another head-on collision.
The man that murdered Scott crossed into our country on our
southern border in Arizona in 1998 per immigration officials.
He travelled to Michigan at that time and obtained a driver's
license on June 30, 2000. Fifteen days later he was charged
with drunk driving in Monroe, Michigan. Authorities in Michigan
notified Immigration and he was sent back to Mexico. Six months
later in January 2001, the U.S. Border Patrol caught him again
and again they sent him home. He was back in the States again 2
months later in March and he moved to North Carolina to work as
a roofer. In February 2002 he was arrested for speeding 88
miles an hour in a 55-mile-an-hour speed zone and tests showed
that his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit. That
DUI was still pending when 3 weeks later he was nabbed again
for DUI. He was sentenced to 20 days in jail. In the summer of
2002 this man skipped his court date for the third offense and
the statistics tell us that 27 percent of drunk driving charges
against Hispanics are dismissed because they don't show up for
court. You see, if you don't have a conviction your record is
clean.
In late 2002 he was busted again. This time he was
sentenced to 7 days in jail and supervised visitation (sic). By
now this fellow, still in my country illegally, had earned
himself a felony for DUI, but if you don't have any records you
don't serve detention. In January 2004 he again was charged
with DUI and his blood alcohol level was three times the legal
limit. Results of that arrest, 30 days in jail and supervised
visitation (sic). A spokesperson with the Department of
Homeland Security says that she couldn't explain why this
particular repeat offender was not in their data base.
On July the 16th after a whole day of drinking and just
having fun this illegal took my son's life and he has darkened
the life of Tina forever. For all intents and purposes he has
orphaned my two grandchildren. One Charlotte reporter last
month wrote that he, however, was not an example of the
problems of illegal immigration. This article also stated that
most illegals respect the U.S. laws. I believe that the facts
speak for themselves. This country has 630,000 criminal illegal
felons or a full 29 percent of our total population in prison
today at a cost annually to taxpayers of $1.6 billion. Recent
reports tell us that 25 American citizens die every day in this
country at the hands of an illegal. In addition to those
horrible numbers 624,000 illegal fugitives are hiding in my
Nation. The Latino community leaders have told us that extreme
culture differences and the lack of knowledge of the laws of
this country are the reasons that this death rate is spiraling
upwards but our border is still open as we speak.
We have all read and heard of the economic devastation that
this invasion is causing the American taxpayer.
Experts in this area are reporting to us crippling numbers.
Our family's personal experience with the unfairness of this
financial outrage: Scott and Tina were air lifted and treated
at a medical facility in Wilmington, North Carolina that deadly
day. Two passengers in the truck were also treated for their
injuries at this same excellent hospital. Our family received a
bill in excess of $89,000 for the 7-hours of treatment that my
son received there. The other two people left this hospital
owing no money and now have vanished into the fabric of my
country. We are a Nation of laws and our laws are not just for
some but for every single person here. The statement that most
undocumented respect the U.S. laws is a joke. The mere fact
that they smuggle themselves into our home, they consume our
resources, they kill and hurt our citizens, they protest and
demand more rights than they give their victims is unacceptable
and it is a crime.
As this Nation is fighting a war on terror, Homeland
Security should be the No. 1 priority of every citizen and
every government official, but we still have that open door. We
have immigration laws on our books already and for decades they
have not been enforced. Because of the lack of enforcement
Scott and millions of other innocent citizens have lost their
lives. I believe that the cost of human life is just too high a
price to pay for cheap labor. Our communities and our highways
wreak of more terror than the war zones do in Iraq. We must put
a stop to this misery.
We have to protect this Nation. We must give America back
to its citizens. A Nation in chaos is still a governed society,
it's just by the wrong people, for the wrong purposes, and the
results are disastrous. No family should have to suffer the
preventable, unacceptable heartache that this American family
is suffering because our Nation is not enforcing our laws. I
want to thank you for asking me to be here today and one more
comment. I think that if the 287 program had been in place in
Brunswick County, North Carolina my son would still be alive.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Moose follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you. Vice Chairman.
Mr. McHenry. I'll be happy to yield to Congresswoman
Myrick.
Mrs. Myrick. I want to thank you very much. The one thing I
want to say about you is that you have turned tremendous,
tremendous grief into a huge advocacy that is helping lots and
lots of people and we thank you for that because what you're
doing is unbelievable research and speaking and literally
changing this fabric we're talking about and thank you for
doing that and I know you'll keep it up because you're
committed and that's why we're here today is to try and figure
out what we can do to stop this so other people don't go
through what you and your family are still going through. We
can't relate because we haven't been there. Sheriff
Pendergraph, I wanted to ask you a question. How often do you
see returns after deportation? What would you say your
percentages are.
Mr. Pendergraph. That's hard to estimate and a rough guess
would be 10 percent. The quickest we've seen is 3 days but
frequently it's a week and, in fact, we don't run into them
unless they commit another crime.
Mrs. Myrick. I understand that.
Mr. Pendergraph. They could cross back into this country
and not commit a crime and they wouldn't come in contact with
my 287(g) program or they could be in another surrounding
county or another part of the country; we wouldn't know. The
ones that we see--the small percentage that we see return, have
come back, have been rearrested for some reason.
Mrs. Myrick. For criminal reasons.
Mr. Pendergraph. Yes.
Mrs. Myrick. That was my point.
Mr. Souder. Sue, might I interrupt you for a technical
question.
Mrs. Myrick. Yes.
Mr. Souder. I don't mean to disrupt your flow of
questioning. Because we have--we have--one of our most
difficult things in drug intelligence and in now Homeland
Security is we collect all kinds of data and it's very hard as
a member of the Homeland Security Committee and chairman of
this committee to figure out how this is used. When you get a
case, Congresswoman Myrick just asked you what seems to be in
the computer age a not hard question but we don't generally get
the answer no matter who we ask, so I wanted to ask you a
technical question of what happens; that when you get a--an
illegal who has been convicted and you said one--the least is 3
days, do you--who do you report that crime to? What centers
would get that information? Would it go into the Department of
Homeland Security? Does it go to your regional Law Enforcement
Center? Where does the raw data go? Does it go beyond your
county.
Mr. Pendergraph. Right. We fingerprint everyone now that
has not declared that they're a U.S. citizen and tells us on
the initial interview that they are not U.S. citizens or at
least they're not born in the United States. They're
fingerprinted through the ICE data base and the Federal
Government has wonderful data bases and information systems,
they're just not sharing them with anyone that's not affiliated
with this program. They have a photo recognition system, we
fingerprint and photograph and within 2 minutes we get the
information back. If they've ever had contact with Immigration
anywhere in the United States whether it's on the border or
another State, California, once we finger- print someone and
find they're a return that information does go to ICE. They
pick up on that and it also goes to the U.S. Attorney, Western
District of North Carolina prosecution, as a return. So we
store that and we are keeping very specific records and we do
keep good data. I just don't have that in front of me right
now. But we are keeping good information. The problem is if you
don't have that program and, again, thank goodness that Alan is
about to get on board with this. We can keep statistics that no
other agencies can do right now.
Mr. Souder. So with your fingerprint program in your
county----
Mr. Pendergraph. Yes.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. It goes in and you can now tell
because the names are still a problem; they're almost
irrelevant----
Mr. Pendergraph. The names are irrelevant.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. And the false green cards and
Social Security numbers are more or less irrelevant and without
a fingerprint it doesn't work. Now let me ask something that
came up in the district in Winston-Salem. There a local
prosecutor and sheriff said one of the problems when you pick
up somebody on--on the road that the police cars themselves may
not have a fingerprint machine in them with which to read the
I.D. which means you're back to the name again unless the
person is hauled to us at a central place. Can you explain the
challenges of how--what funding challenges we're looking at
because fingerprints are the only way to do this but if we
don't have agencies that can read it how does that work.
Mr. Pendergraph. My--I'm the wrong person to ask technical
questions. I can't turn my computer on without something
happening to it but a fingerprint data transmit, it takes a lot
of space on a server. That is capable--you know, that is a
possibility. It's very expensive to transmit fingerprints.
Ultimately I'd like to see that done but you can take them
anywhere in this State and finger- print them and if you don't
have that ICE data base like I have in my jail in my processing
center you won't find out if they're here illegally or what
their immigration status is.
Mr. Souder. But if somebody had been picked up at the spot
on the DUI and the policeman in the car, would they have had to
bring the person into the jail or had them in the----
Mr. Pendergraph. Yes. Yes. They can't do that from the
vehicle right now.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mrs. Myrick. Would you know whether that's possible to do
from a vehicle simply because you're saying it's very--the data
base is so big.
Mr. Pendergraph. We are--We just purchased a mobile command
center to use for drunk driving checkpoints----
Mrs. Myrick. OK.
Mr. Pendergraph [continuing]. And one of the things that we
do is--we have is an AFIS system--an AFIS system and we are
trying to work out the technical problems of finger- printing
drunk drivers and transmitting that data back to my data base;
it goes to the State and FBI. And it is a very difficult
issue--expensive issue through microwave technology to transmit
the data that you need to transmit a fingerprint.
Mrs. Myrick. So we would be looking at a lot of money to
try and have something in the cars----
Mr. Pendergraph. Especially--We have mobile laptop
computers in most----
Mrs. Myrick. Right.
Mr. Pendergraph [continuing]. Patrol cars now but we don't
have access to fingerprints that we can check in the cars.
Mrs. Myrick. I wanted to ask you about what additional
costs this has brought to your department. Have the costs
outweighed the benefits; benefits outweighed the cost? You
know, where do you stand and what is it that we need to be
doing along those lines.
Mr. Pendergraph. Well, it has brought added cost and some
sheriffs' offices probably wouldn't be able to afford what I've
done. I house a lot of Federal inmates and I have a contract
with the U.S. Marshals' Office that they pay us to have inmates
and we have as everyone else has an excess of unprojected
revenue coming from the Marshals' Service that we were able to
fund this program with and we're having--even though ICE paid
for the equipment and the computer system that they put in for
me we're having to pay for the DSL and the information systems
lines that go back to them. And then I have 12 employees that
after this year that the County is going to have to pick up the
funding for their salaries and benefits so--but any person we
identify that's a criminal, and we've found murderers, drug
traffickers and everything else through our system, is worth
whatever cost it is to get those people out of our community.
The frustrating thing is that we can look for them back because
there is nothing there to stop them from coming back.
Mrs. Myrick. Sheriff Cloninger, since you've just gone
through this Memorandum of Understanding process with 287(g)
where do you see problems or challenges that we need to
straighten out that would make it easier, simpler, quicker,
whatever it may be, for other agencies to go through this
process, because I understand it's a bit cumbersome.
Mr. Cloninger. Well, the application process wasn't
difficult in my opinion but it's the fear--I've talked with
many sheriffs in this area--because you have to look at it
another way. When Sheriff Pendergraph started, well, that
pushed the illegals away from Mecklenburg County.
Mrs. Myrick. So they go to other counties.
Mr. Cloninger. The funding is in Mecklenburg County so
they've come to Gaston, Cabarrus, Union. And I've talked with
other sheriffs and they have fear of the cost and I think
that's--it's--money runs a lot of things but like Sheriff
Pendergraph said why do we want a murderer in our community
just because it costs us a few thousand dollars to have them
out of our community; you have to make a determination of what
the--the proper expenditure to fund and the other sheriffs that
I've talked to want to come on board but they are afraid of the
cost and expense. I don't know what the cost and expenses are.
Like Sheriff Pendergraph I'm presently able to house some
Federal inmates that will help deter some of the cost but----
Mrs. Myrick. Well, if both of you could--if you could think
about the fact of how we could simplify this process from the
standpoint of not just the cost but I'm talking about the
actual process of getting on board, I would appreciate it if
you would share that information because----
Mr. Cloninger. I'd be happy to.
Mrs. Myrick [continuing]. Because we do want to encourage
more people to do this. Sheriff, did you have a comment.
Mr. Pendergraph. I guess one comment, and trying not to be
too critical in meeting with the Director in Washington, Julie
Myers----
Mrs. Myrick. Right.
Mr. Pendergraph [continuing]. I think that the information
that the Attorney General and some of the folks in Washington
get is so sanitized and cleaned up before they get it, they
have an opinion that things are working well----
Mrs. Myrick. Um-hum.
Mr. Pendergraph [continuing]. And I had to inform them that
it is not working well; that it's a very difficult process to
get involved and, again, had it not been for you I wouldn't be
operating this now because I applied, never heard anything and
there were roadblocks and reasons we couldn't do things every
turn I made, and I know a sheriff in Tulsa, Oklahoma that has
tried for 3 years to get a telephone call returned from ICE
about this program and until I told her about it he didn't get
a telephone call returned. There's a frustration across the
board with there's a stonewall somewhere that somebody is
saying: I don't want you to do anything about this. That's just
the feeling.
Mrs. Myrick. Well, that's why the chairman is here today
to--to figure out what it is that we can do to change this and
I appreciate all of you testifying. I--Also, Mr. Chairman, we
had 200 people here today. You can see the interest in our
community for this program and I did want--this is a little
aside but I know one of our State senators is here, Robert
Pittinger, and he just told me that the bill that they have
been working on in the State legislature which he authored in
the Senate and it passed through the House to stop issuing
licenses in North Carolina with taxpayer I.D. numbers, the
Governor hasn't signed it yet but it will go into law Monday if
it isn't signed. So I just wanted to pass that on because
that's one of the reasons we figure we're getting so many
people in here, Mark, in North Carolina because it's so easy to
get driver's licenses here compared to other States. You don't
have to prove who you are. So I just wanted to put that in the
record and thank you all.
Mr. McHenry. Thank you all for agreeing to be here. I think
it's important that we hear from folks that are affected by
illegal immigration and let's say this. Let's make sure that
we're very clear about that there is no misunderstanding here.
When you--When you come to this country illegally you're
breaking the law to get here.
That's to start your process of being a part of America.
You break the law to get here. Once you're here illegally
you've already broken the law once so it's not much of a leap
to break the law again. So the condition I would make is that
if you break the law to get here you are not going to respect
the law once you're here. What we're--we're discussing here
today is not simply illegals in the community but those
illegals that are committing horrible acts and encounter law
enforcement. Personally I have not had any problem with my
sheriff, Alan, because I haven't broken the law and so I don't
have opportunity to encounter you, thankfully.
Mr. Cloninger. That's good.
Mr. McHenry. So I want this to be clear to the media and to
the public at large, we're not anti-immigrants.
Mrs. Myrick. Right.
Mr. McHenry. We're talking about illegals in the community;
not just illegals in the community but those illegals that
commit acts such as drunk driving, such as drug trafficking,
such as assault and battery, or worse and so let's talk about
this, this 287(g) program. This is fantastic feedback we've
gotten from you--from you, Sheriff Pendergraph, and this is a
good indication of what we'll be going through in Gaston County
because of the leadership of Alan Cloninger. We're very
grateful for that. This is a wonderful program, a great
opportunity for Gaston County. And what I've found from Lincoln
County which I also represent is the sheriff there has a desire
to be involved with the 287(g) program because you are so
effective in Mecklenburg County that they've seen an enormous
rise in illegals committing crimes in Lincoln County because
they don't want to be in Mecklenburg County----
Mr. Pendergraph. That's good.
Mr. McHenry [continuing]. Because you're effective.
Mr. Pendergraph. That's good.
Mr. McHenry. That is fantastic. So this coordinated effort
has to go across county lines and we have to have the resources
in place. Now how long--Sheriff Pendergraph, how long have you
had the program in place.
Mr. Pendergraph. We started processing May the 1st, this
year.
Mr. McHenry. May the 1st. So since May the 1st your 12
deputies, how many folks have they encountered.
Mr. Pendergraph. Around 1,100 that have been arrested that
we have processed and over half of those have been detained for
deportation immediately because of some prior deportation or
some felony that they have--If I might make an example, this
lady got arrested Monday. She had been in this country 30 years
from Trinidad. She has 18 aliases, seven Social Security
numbers, five dates of birth and she's been arrested in five
different States for felonies----
Mrs. Myrick. Good heavens!
Mr. Pendergraph [continuing]. And we're the only ones that
have picked up on her and she is detained for deportation right
now. And I've got multiple examples of the same thing and
they're in every county in this country, I can assure you.
We can find it because we have the 287(g) program.
Mr. McHenry. That is amazing. Absolutely amazing.
Mr. Souder. Why wasn't she in the data bases.
Mr. Pendergraph. She was. She was in the ICE data bases
but----
Mr. Souder. But local law enforcement didn't have a way to
get to the ICE data bases.
Mr. Pendergraph. No. Huh-uh.
Mr. McHenry. So this is a question linking Federal data
with State and local law enforcement.
Mr. Pendergraph. Right.
Mr. McHenry. This is not--This is absolutely frightening
what you just told me and we're talking about illegal
immigrants; we're not even talking about terrorist plotters.
This is absolutely amazing. Alan, do you have a comment.
Mr. Cloninger. Well, I think what you also have to look at,
there is another element out there, child molesters that we
have to identify also. We have--just those in our country who
are molesters, we're having difficulty tracking them down.
Mrs. Myrick. They can't hear you, Alan.
Mr. Cloninger. Excuse me. I'm going to yank this out of
here in just a minute because----
Mr. Souder. Snuggle close. We won't make any Ricky-Bobby
kind of----
Mr. Cloninger. That would be a good idea. But we've got
the--the child molesters that we have to arrest--two sheriffs--
and we have difficulty keeping up with those citizens that are
here legally. So the illegal ones that are roaming across the
country we have to worry about those also. So it's just not
somebody to deal with the DUIs. We have to be aware that we
have to identify those people who are preying on our children
also. So it's so important that--and it comes down to money if
the funding is there because we're going to push them out of
Gaston County into York County and Cleveland County and Lincoln
County. It's got to be that type of way across the country,
push them all the way across the border.
Mr. McHenry. Well, I see the sheriff of Rutherford County,
Philip Byers, is here, it's a county I represent, and based on
conversations with him he foresees it affecting Rutherford
County which is two counties over from us.
Mr. Cloninger. That's the reason I worked so hard to get it
here with you all's help because I knew when Jim started it,
and Jim's program is an excellent program; we're going to model
ours after his, but that was the effect we were going to have
in Gaston County and to protect Gaston County I've got to have
it. I believe all the other sheriffs feel that way also.
Mr. McHenry. District Attorney Lands, in terms of your case
loads do you have any statistics about illegals coming through
the Gaston County Courthouse.
Mr. Lands. No, sir, I don't have any statistics on that,
and I think it needs to be said and I think we all know
illegals are not the only ones committing crimes. There's
certainly plenty of crimes by American-born citizens so
that's--that's there but it just seems like the illegal stands
out because you can very easily start out with it being the
language problem. I mean, I can deal with, you know, meeting
people in the public with five no operator's license by
American citizens but the time it takes to try to communicate
with someone who is not speaking English with you and trying to
understand that and trying to communicate what you need to do
in that situation, you--it just stands out more. So it just
seems that it's there and it creates a greater problem. But
there is no question about the fact that--that the numbers are
increasing. I don't think there is any question about that.
And, as I said in my written statement, it has a negative
impact on the court system when you have to use all your
resources in trying to deal with people who are the victims of
crime and you send out investigators to try to reach them and
trying to get them to come in and they won't come in and you've
got their children who have been molested and the parents won't
bring in the kids to talk with the prosecutor to try to
prosecute the case because the fear is they'll be deported or
the fear is that the minute they do anything then their family
back home can be injured or they'll be injured and the crime
problem is just there, it's an undergrowth and it's increasing.
Mr. McHenry. Well, additionally, Sheriff Pendergraph, you
mentioned--I asked this question to the agent from ICE that--
the head of ICE for our region and he talked about the Law
Enforcement Support Center and heralded this as a positive
thing. Certainly I think it's good to have information out
there, yes. You mentioned in your testimony, you used the term
worthless. Can you give some more details here? How can this be
improved? Should we scrap it and use the funds to get the
287(g) program spread out? I mean----
Mr. Pendergraph. I think--I think you should do exactly
that because we've tried many times to call and phone in a name
of someone if they give us a name, they don't have any
identification, to the Law Enforcement Support Center. You
might get an answer back in a couple of hours; it might be
tomorrow. By then this person made bond and they're gone and
you don't know where they've gone. Somebody made a comment to
me today that there was a Latino arrested in York County and
the trooper bought him in and he said: What's the guy's name?
And he told him. He said: There's three of those already in
there----
Mrs. Myrick. Three.
Mr. Pendergraph [continuing]. In the jail now. But they're
using names that they know people that are legal and when you
phone that name in to the Law Enforcement Support Center, I'm
not trying to be flippant about this, I don't have time for
this. You go to the resource that you have and you know to be
accurate. The 287(g) program with the fingerprints, the
photographs is very accurate and very good and the rest of it
to me is worthless and a waste of time.
Mr. McHenry. Well, thank you for your testimony. Thank you
all for your testimony. Mrs. Moose, thank you so much for
telling your story. I know it's not easy to share but it's very
important that the policymakers in Washington hear your story
and I know that Congresswoman Myrick is working so very hard in
your son's honor and thank you for working hard on this
important issue.
MS. MOOSE: We appreciate really what she's trying to do
very much.
Mr. McHenry. And thank you all for agreeing to testify
today. It's very important and we're grateful for the input.
Mr. Souder. Congresswoman Foxx.
Ms. Foxx. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to pay a
compliment also to my former colleague, Senator Pittinger, who
is here and I thank Congressman Myrick for bringing him to our
attention. He's sitting right over here. We sat pretty close to
each other on the back row in the North Carolina Senate my last
term there. In addition to the legislation which you got passed
in terms of the taxpayer I.D. he did something which I think is
taking North Carolina in a--in a big leap and something that
many of us tried to do for a long, long time and that is to
force North Carolina State government agencies to check data
bases to see if people are here legally or illegally and I
think some of the issues you all have brought up make us
realize we've got to do a better job of making sure those data
bases are reliable. But Senator Pittinger is really working at
the State level and in thinking about what he's done and what
some of us are trying to do in the legislature it appears to me
that our Federal Government has failed in so many ways to do
what we should be doing in terms of illegal immigration and I
was thinking about what Mrs. Moose said a little bit ago. The
press is constantly touting the number of people who are killed
in Iraq every day and yet very little is said about the number
of people who die as a result of illegal immigration and
illegal immigrants and the impact that they're having on our
country. Our Constitution says that the Federal Government will
protect us from invasion and I believe that's the No. 1 role of
the Federal Government is to protect us and defend us. So it
seems to me that where the Federal Government fails it's our
responsibility to help local law enforcement and State law
enforcement to pick up the gap and it's obvious that the 287(g)
program can help us. And I'd like to followup on what
Congresswoman Myrick was asking a little bit ago about how we
can stream- line the processes for this program and it seems to
me that we need to find a way again to work on our systems. I
guess I think--I think very much on an individual level but I
also think on a systems level and believe that we need to do
all we possibly can to establish systems that will make things
easier. And it's clear the Federal Government is burdened and
doesn't have enough money. We could never create enough
personnel or money at the Federal level to enforce our laws so
it's clear to me that we have to make this system easier to use
and more accessible to local law enforcement. So I would urge
you all to give us any information you can give us or people we
should contact, other folks. Mr. Pendergraph, you've heard it
said that--you spoke to Ms. Myers who took care of the person
in Oklahoma but if you have colleagues who were running into
problems you need to let us know and if there are sheriffs out
across the State whose own Member of Congress will not help
them I can tell you that these Members of Congress will help
and I am--I am more than a feisty mountain woman. My husband
says I remind him of a little ant who once--they take on big
tasks and--and get them done and I--I like to make systems work
so I hope you will help us make the system work at the local
level if we can't make it work at the Federal level.
I think the people of this State are fed up, frankly, with
the Federal Government and what we're not doing and that's why
you're seeing these Members of Congress at least doing all they
can to make it work. Mr. Pendergraph, go ahead.
Mr. Pendergraph. Representative Foxx, if I could just make
a comment. I know one of the--the holdups of the 287(g) program
as far as granting that request to other sheriffs' offices in
North Carolina particularly is resources our local ICE agents
have here. SAC Ken Smith who was here earlier wouldn't divulge
and I won't either; I know how many ICE agents are in North
Carolina and I know that since we started our program that
they've had to reassign ICE agents to deal with the numbers
that we're seeing. They can't support many more because they
are flooded with work.
I don't know where the resources are going once they're
appropriated in Washington but they're not getting to the local
field offices because they can't handle what they have now. If
more sheriffs in this State got on board then there would be no
ICE agents to deal with what they normally do.
Ms. Foxx. Mr. Lands, may I ask you a question.
Mr. Lands. Yes.
Ms. Foxx. What could we do to authorize the State courts to
handle more of these cases? Is there--Is there something that
we can do to allow more being done at the local level so we
don't require more ICE agents? Can we change our system in such
a way to do that? Could--Do we need to write Federal laws that
devolve some of that responsibility to State courts.
Mr. Lands. I guess that addresses what I said earlier,
what's going to be the immigration policy of the Federal
Government. My understanding right now is this is a Federal
Government issue and the States can have local law enforcement
say this is an immigrant and then they'll designate--I mean,
this is an illegal immigrant and they will designate and ICE
takes over and we have to go to Atlanta and an immigration
judge in Atlanta decides whether they get deported or not. I
guess it would be the authority of Congress to decide that a
State judge could have people who make the authority but that
would be a complete change of the law and, you know, that would
be creating a jurisdiction for State courts that doesn't exist
now and that's something that I guess you all certainly would
be able to look at but that would be a total--total difference
in the way things are carried out.
Ms. Foxx. But, you know, Congressman McHenry pointed this
out and I've mentioned this comment with many people. The rule
of law I believe is what sets this country apart from every
other country in the world in addition to our Judeo-Christian
beliefs and those two go intimately together in my opinion and
it seems to me that in our rule of law we should think of these
people who break the law first as criminals; second, as illegal
immigrants, they're tied together. It seems to me we ought to
find whatever mechanism we can find to process them as
criminals and give them the--the results--the effect of their
criminal activity and think of them as illegal immigrants next
and that's--that seems to me a frustration that everybody is
having now and--and they are I think--many of them are prone I
think to break the law a second, a third and a fourth time
because they came here first by breaking the law.
Mr. Lands. Well, this sort of touches on my--my written
statement there but you were saying that they ought to be
viewed as a criminal first and then the illegal immigrant
second, and I guess my written statement was saying that the
Federal Government has to decide whether being an illegal
immigrant is deportable or not because you're--the way the
system works now is we're having to wait for them to commit a
crime--a State crime and become a criminal before they even
show up for being as--as deportable and I referenced--of
course, this was me trying to figure it out--I referenced that
there's--you could place illegal immigrants in five categories.
Group 1 is the illegal immigrant who commits a serious crime
that everybody designates as serious. Well, there is mechanisms
in place to try to have that person deported. Group 2 is the
illegal immigrant who commits a crime that the Federal
Government right now has been designating over the lack of
resources as not serious but the State government says is. A
classic example, driving while impaired. That has not been
deportable before but efforts are being made to say that is
serious enough. That is Category B. Category C is the illegal
immigrant who runs a red light and now comes to the attention
of law enforcement. Category D is the illegal victim who now
has been the victim of a crime but because of that
victimization is now known to law enforcement. And Category E
is the person who is out there, hasn't had any influence--
hasn't impacted as--the law enforcement hasn't come across
them. Now they've all committed the same Federal crime that
they're here illegally and as I understand the Federal law they
all could be deported but that's not happening. The Federal
Government says we've got to wait until they commit a serious
crime or we'll have an argument now whether they commit drunk
driving and now create this second category of crime but are we
going to--if we get 287(g) authority, you know, what's going to
happen when these sheriffs say, OK, you know, this person here
we think is in a gang. We haven't seen them committing a crime,
we haven't gotten the evidence that they've committed a crime
but we know they're in a gang; we want to write them up and
have them deported and it goes to Atlanta and the judge says:
That's not in our category yet. You know, is that going to
happen? And, you know, you're right. I think--I think everybody
says we want to get the criminals out, the ones who are
committing crimes, but then, you know, are we--does that create
an amnesty program that if you don't commit the crime you're
staying and that's--you all are going to have to come up with
that--that designation. What's the immigration policy? Because
once you give 287(g) authority to allow the local law
enforcement agents are you telling them, OK, you come across an
illegal alien who runs a red light, do you write them up or
not, you know? Are you going to make it where they have to
commit a serious, however you want to define it, State crime
before they ever get deported? And, you know, that's--you're
waiting around for them to victimize people in this State
before you ever decide whether you're going to deport them or
not, and I don't know that's something people want to wait
around for.
Mr. Souder. Let me--I have some questions, Mr. Lands. Is it
illegal in North Carolina to have a false I.D.?
Mr. Lands. Yes.
Mr. Souder. Isn't that something you could prosecute.
Mr. Lands. You can prosecute. That's State law. That's
correct.
Mr. Souder. Do you prosecute for a false I.D.
Mr. Lands. If we determine that and we do the best we can
in prosecuting it.
Mr. Souder. Don't almost--Doesn't almost every illegal who
works at a place in North Carolina have a false I.D.? In other
words, couldn't theoretically your local sheriff go with your
local district attorney and go into every workplace and
actually arrest people.
Mr. Cloninger. We could but we'd have nowhere to put them.
I mean, that's--that's what you're saying here.
Mr. Souder. Well, let me ask another question then.
Mr. Lands. Well, it's probably--in the vast majority it's a
misdemeanor. You're talking about under North Carolina
structured law getting a suspended sentence. Law enforcement
has to decide whether they're going to go and determine that
and--and probably at this point it comes to their--it comes to
their attention. They're not going to go out and look for
everybody.
Mr. Souder. I want to make a point of this. So--But the
State of North Carolina could, in fact, make it something other
than a misdemeanor if they felt there was a crime problem here
in North Carolina from illegals; North Carolina could make it,
if they chose, a felony to have a false I.D. because it's--in
other words, this isn't just a Federal question here. You can
theoretically go in now--Isn't it a State crime to not pay
taxes--North Carolina taxes.
Mr. Lands. That's correct.
Mr. Souder. And couldn't the sheriff theoretically working
with the local district attorney go into every business where
there is an illegal who hasn't declared under their actual name
and pick them up? Because what we're really struggling with
here is--First off, we don't have control of our borders. None
of us here believe that the Federal Government is doing their
job. But to some degree in this country nobody wants--I'm a
Republican, I heard Ronald Reagan's speech, Barry Goldwater,
one of those people, but the fact is nobody wants to raise
their taxes at the township level, city level, county level or
Federal level and this is going to cost a lot of money and it
isn't--and our debt is greater than all State and local and
township debt combined in the United States times 10. Only we
can print money and you can't. That's a big difference. So we
inflate it and we charge interest rates. We sell off our Nation
to foreign entities because we run up the Federal debt. Now the
fact is that they can't just in this massive question, nothing
in front of us--quite frankly nothing in front of us even
begins--as I mentioned earlier a work permit--due to the scale
of this we're going to have to go out with this thing together.
You're going to have to go. It isn't just enough to say to the
Federal Government: You guys don't have the will to do this,
because it's the businesses here in North Carolina and in my
district that are--that are saying, look, we're going to--the
manufacturing will shut down without these workers, a lot of
the service industries, then all the people, the doctors,
attorneys and others who will be--because there is this income
there. Another question I have is have you been sitting down
with your local chambers and trying to talk through it because
this isn't just a matter of saying go fix it because the
question is are you helping fix it in North Carolina in
addition to us at the Federal level because we're going to have
to jump on this together. This is going to be like crystal meth
and meth that we--we had some States starting to control the
pharmacy stuff then we realize that it just rolled over to
another State then it moved to the Internet. In a hearing
earlier this summer on meth the DA is now saying 80 percent of
it is coming across the border; it's now becoming a problem,
precursors are coming across. And somehow we've got to figure
out how to do this together because we're never going to have
enough ICE agents. We need a lot more. But we're also going to
have to have the States saying: Look, there's a whole bunch of
State laws being broken. You don't have to sit back and wait
for us to do it. And if you don't have tough enough State laws,
pass some.
Mr. Lands. And they can be passed. I would certainly say
the legislature can do that. The question becomes is that a
serious enough crime--State crime for the Feds to decide
they're going to deport the person. Drunk driving hasn't been
considered serious enough by the Federal Government to deport.
They haven't given the resources to deport. Now there is being
efforts to try to do that. Do you think if we come in there
with a State misdemeanor that they didn't pay taxes that at
that point the judge down in Atlanta says deportation? You
know, we don't know. We don't know what the policy is. And what
I was saying with 287(g) training you're going to have to let
this law--these law enforcement officers know. Is--You find an
illegal alien who sped and ran a red light. Is that going to be
deportable? Is it?
Mr. Souder. I was kind of building on Congressman McHenry's
comment that they broke the law. They didn't break the law--
they probably broke the law on immigrating, the law on I.D.,
the law on taxes, they've broken a series of laws in that and
that one of the questions is deportation, another--are they
going to be in prison for breaking that because if you were in
prison for breaking it, particularly if you stepped it up from
a small misdemeanor to a greater one, the word of mouth on the
street is going to change as well and we need to be working
this--this process up because it also buys us time to make more
Federal cases on that. You're absolutely right. We've got to
decide what's a deportable offense and if we start to make
this--this change, that we're going to have a two-tiered
system. In fact, one group with Hispanics I meet with in my
district off the record with no media, they were making the
case that there are two kinds of laws and it's part of their
culture and tradition because Mexico, in fact, doesn't enforce
the laws, they've been--and there are kind of serious offenses
and small laws that you can ignore and we're developing this
process in the United States that we have double legal
standards. There are laws you can get out of. You can drive 68
but if you cross 70 and you kind of have still some--that's an
unofficial written rule, stay within five, occasionally at the
end of the month it varies, you learn that as a citizen, but
that you look at this and we have a little bit of that but this
is a wholesale change in this kind of process.
Now what I've seen--what I--what I am incredibly frustrated
with is I don't see any realistic discussion quite frankly in
Washington, DC, on how hard this is going to be and how many
billions of dollars and how long it's going to take. Everybody
wants to just do a magic thing and say we're going to do work
permits and we do--or we're going to do--seal the border. I was
just--I mean, I go down to the wall a few times a year. Fencing
this border is going to take forever and when I met with the
Mexican ambassador just before break and he was trying to give
me this big shtick about how they're improving things and all
of that, that there is an area, Neely's Crossing, just east of
El Paso where the Mexican police can't even go into and they
have a bulldozer there. When I was there with the border patrol
it started out they told us we needed to clear out; it wasn't
safe. They have a bulldozer to knock down the fences and I
asked the Mexican ambassador: Why don't you stop by removing
the bulldozer. That would be a start. Take out the bulldozer or
give us like an F16 permission to go over there and take out
their stupid bulldozer because this is--this is going to be a
long process of doing the fence. Then the whole nature of how
to figure out how to secure these I.D.'s as we've learned
without fingerprints, secure I.D.'s is a joke because they get
different names.
By the way, Sheriff Pendergraph, if you have any more great
examples I'd love as many of them for the record as many as you
want to say because that helps make our case of how stupid this
is, but how hard it's going to be because then we need things
to read the fingerprints all over the country. Then we've got
all these Federal agencies. What I was asking Scott, my ICE
detail, is how come this information is--why doesn't the local
law enforcement have this, and he gave me two more--we use
every letter of the alphabet. We have so many intelligence
agencies that we use every letter of the alphabet, at least
three or four variations of it, that--because this is a RIS
system. You all don't use the RIS system. Why is that? Well,
immigration law has a confidentiality. Yes, you can find a
felon but not if they've violated immigration law unless you
get into the 287 program. I mean, we've got a mess in trying
just to sort that out. Then that--employers are calling in;
they can find out, they can be told by Social Security that the
number is doubtful, but if they make a mistake they can be sued
and that--that we have--we're looking in my opinion if we go at
this seriously on a border and I.D. question 2 to 4 years if we
do massive infusions of funds to try to make it because
otherwise we'll deport them and they'll be back, deport, be
back, deport, be back, and in that we're looking at two to 4
years. That's where the question of--State and local question.
If you can put some of these people in prison and areas, will
you do it? Buy some time and as we add more agents and as we
get the border secured behind and as we get a better I.D.
system we're going to have to have some sort of thing. Every
police agency in my district--first off, the rural districts
have been overwhelmed with meth. They have officers that are
burned out in overtime. They don't have prison space. Part of
it is they need to go to their county commissioners and say
that, too. They can't just come to us because if we get the
choice--I have supported the Cops Program. I have been trying
to fund the different--we go in there with different grant
structures that have been hammered. We're going to lose all of
our drug task forces in the Nation if we don't get more--
different grants and all of that type of stuff. I battle for
local law enforcement dollars but we're under tremendous budget
pressures and if you say our first responsibility is let us get
the fence and the border secured and let us work on the I.D.
system and intelligence systems, we need some help from the
State and local law enforcement to buy us some time and in
detention facilities because there isn't enough money to do all
of that and the worse disaster, and I hope we can make this
case here, because if we go back to Washington and pass some
kind of a new system we're going to have such a result of a
classic thing all over again where at the end of the day what
we've done is amnesty and we're going to start the process all
over again. So that's kind of a little--and I'll like to hear
some of your reactions.
Mr. Lands. For people accused of State crimes I think
you're buying your time. They are in his jail and we're waiting
around to try them because of all the number of cases and
whenever the Federal Government decides to look into these
cases we're waiting around for it to be determined whether the
Federal U.S. Attorney's Office will get involved in the case so
you get some time.
Mr. Souder. But do we have anybody in jail for false I.D.
or failure to pay their taxes?
Mr. Lands. No. I would say not at this point. But let me
bring up this fact. I forgot about the case and I may not be
able to give all the correct details on it but I did have an
assistant who was trying a false identification case and
because of the way the statute is written when he subpoenaed
the Federal employee to come in and talk about the Social
Security number he was told: We don't have to honor your State
subpoena.
Mr. Souder. Can you provide some details? That's exactly
what we're looking for. If you can't enforce your State laws,
because we've heard this on tax and immigration questions, we
need the specifics because----
Mr. Lands. We had to send the letter and beg and plead
please come down here and help us prosecute this case because
that's the way the statute is written. The U.S. Attorney has to
give permission for the Federal employee to come to State court
to honor our subpoena.
Mr. Souder. That's very helpful. Any other comments.
Mr. Cloninger. I'd love to comment. When you start talking
about cooperating that's what the 287(g) program is and we're--
myself, we're looking at trying to fund that ourselves without
out-tasking for money. But when you start talking in the nature
of wanting to enforce all of these laws and I'm sitting there
and the jail is almost full, where am I going to put all of
these people that you want arrested? They're here because they
came across illegally. We charge under State law; Mr. Lands'
criminal justice system right now is overburdened with a number
of cases pending because we don't have sufficient funds and
judges, prosecutors to prosecute all the cases. We're just
getting into--You're just adding more to this vicious cycle in
a criminal justice system that is neglected and overburdened as
it is. Now you have infused 400 false I.D. cases. How many of
the pending State cases; crimes that occurred in North Carolina
by citizens are going to be that much further put behind;
continued that much longer trying to do. It's a lot more
complicated than just say State prosecutors, State law
enforcement officers, you enforce your own laws and it will be
all right. That is not the answer, you know, because we're
already at the end of our ropes for money.
Our people holler about the taxes and to sort of say, well,
we'll do this but you've got to pay for it, it only comes down
to the cop on the street, the sheriff running that jail
wondering where is he going to put this body? So it's not as
simple--and I don't--don't mean to read your mind but it's not
as simple as saying, well, enforce your own laws, State; you'll
be all right. They wouldn't be here if they hadn't violated
Federal law in the first place.
Mr. Souder. I will point out, however, that if we raise the
taxes in order to pay for it we'll pay a Federal finder's fee,
our bureaucracy will be about four times as big as your
bureaucracy and it will be less efficient and you've got all
kinds of things behind. I'm not suggesting--and we're more
broke than you are and we've all got to tax the same people.
The people of North Carolina will be taxed in one way or
another to pay for this. This is a--This is--Now the question
is how much--and this is what I have been raising to my
employer is you're going to get a tax on this. If there are
going to be visas one of the things we need to be talking about
in the U.S. Government, it's not like a $50 visa. A work permit
would be something along like $2,000 because who is going to
pay for the enforcement of the overstays? Who is going to pay
the local law enforcement for this? Who is going to pay the
U.S. Attorney's Office? Who is going to pay the U.S. Marshal
Service? They're supposed to be transporting them in many
cases. Then there has to be some kind of a system to figure out
how we're going to fund this at all the levels so that--Ms.
Foxx had a short comment.
Ms. Foxx. Well, I just want to say that I agree with what
the chairman is saying here and I think that by saying that,
no, we can't do this at the local or State level then--then
we're throwing up our hands and giving up and I don't think we
can do that. I think what has to be done is we have to do what
we can do at each level of the government and I think what the
chairman is pointing out are really very important points.
Somebody is going to pay for this somewhere along the line and
we are so much better off pinning it to where it belongs and
making the visas more expensive, doing those kinds of things,
but it's not all going to be done at the Federal level, yet the
Federal Government has abrogated a lot of its responsibility
and I think the people of the State can demand that it be done
at the State, toughen up its laws and say we're going to do
some of this. We realize that some of the problem has been
created by lack of enforcement at the Federal level but you all
are paying for it one way or the other and we're so much better
off if we enforce the laws. That--That's where the money seems
to me ought to be spent instead of in Social Services and in
the human tragedy and human cost that Ms. Moose is talking
about, and that's where we ought to do it and if folks
understand that then eventually I think the people of this
State are going to say to their local county commissioners and
to their State legislators we want you to do what you can do
and then we're going to demand also at the Federal level that
our Federal folks do that. So I completely agree with you--with
the chairman and I think from his experience it instructs us
all.
The other thing I want to say is I read a couple of
articles about this hearing today and I don't know if the
chairman saw them or not but they said this was a dog and pony
show we were having done for political purposes. Well, a lot--
the media will not report this but a lot of good comes out of
these hearings and a lot has been learned today and even if it
doesn't get reported in the media I count on the citizens who
are here today; I count on Senator Pittinger to take some of
what he's learned here today, any county commissioners who are
here, to take these ideas back to them because we won't get
this reported in the media and there won't be credit given to
the chairman for doing what he does to go out and learn these
things because we can't learn them in Washington. You can't
hold enough hearings in Washington to learn the kinds of things
that we've learned here today so I hope those of you that are
here today will go out and say, yes, good was accomplished by
this because we've learned some things we didn't know before
and we'll act on those things. I want you to know we will act
on those things and I'm getting sick and tired of the media
making this look like it's a nothing issue.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Pendergraph.
Mr. Pendergraph. Just a comment. You asked about additional
examples and I could give you multiple examples of people that
have been convicted and served time in jail in other States
that are illegal immigrants in this country and were never
checked through any immigration data base and we ended up with
here or in Mecklenburg County. The bottom line is, and I know
in my sheriff's office if I suggest to my staff that something
get done they'll find a way to do it. If I told them I want a
door put in that hallway I'll come back tomorrow and they've
cut a door in that hallway. The tone has to be set at the top
and the tone at the top is not to get something done. If the
President of the United States decided he wanted something done
about this he would get it done and it's not being done and
until that tone and that mission is set and if we can--we're
chipping away at an iceberg here that we're making little bitty
pieces of ice then it makes no difference across the country.
It's got to be a nationwide thing that's addressed just like it
is here with the Federal Government on board and if you want
the borders secured--and I'm not being funny about this--send a
sheriff down there. We'll go down there and secure those
borders. But that's what's got to be done is to put something
there to keep the ones we do get out from coming back. The only
thing that is going to change is for Mexico to improve--and
they're not all Mexican and Latinos that we're checking at the
border. We've got 17 different countries we've identified that
we deported people to already. It's to improve the economy in
those countries that they don't need to leave for a better
life, to enforce our Federal laws and to make it a felony to
employ someone in this country where they can't get a job
easily.
Mrs. Myrick. That's right.
Mr. Pendergraph. That's what they come here for and I can't
hold that against them. They're looking for a better life but
I've arrested people in my career that have robbed banks
because they're trying to feed their families, too, and which
laws are we going to enforce? Which Federal laws? They didn't
get a break because they were trying to feed their family and
it's just frustrating.
Mr. Souder. With all due respect and fairness in El Paso
we've heard this, at Nogales we've heard this, San Rosita, San
Diego we've heard this. The local sheriffs and prosecutors at
one of these locations, the threshold for the Federal marijuana
is 700 pounds. They don't even take it under 700. At local it's
200. And when I challenged them with that they said we're tired
of our jails being so full of people running drugs to Indiana
and to North Carolina because if your drug appetite is
overrunning and jamming our prisons, people coming here
illegally aren't coming to work in our towns, they're coming to
work in North Carolina and Indiana, and you guys then come to
us and say why aren't the sheriffs on the border securing it?
Why aren't the prosecutors handling it? It's your problem and
our towns are paying for it at the border because you won't
handle your problems in Indiana and North Carolina. It is--It
is a multi-task where we all need to work together and there's
going to be tiers of this in limited budget. It's hard and,
you're right, there hasn't been a clear leadership from the
top. I'm afraid that this pressure to get some kind of a bill
is going to wind up with a bill that's worse than no bill; that
if we do a window dressing that results in an unenforceable
provision and then results in--in effect authorizing what's
here with no plans for what to do with it, no--then we back off
and we're right back to where we were that started us with it.
Mrs. Myrick. That's right.
Mr. Souder. So we need to do a bill but we need to do a
right bill and we need to do it in steps, not in one big ball
here because we don't have the funds; we don't have the ability
to do it in one big ball. We got into this over decades and
it's going to take us a while to get out.
Now--But we all have to work together and I can--I hear
your passion; I hear your frustration. I mean, here we have a
mom who is saying I gave the ultimate sacrifice with this
because you guys didn't do your job and it's a challenge to us
to try to address that.
I have a couple of very more technical questions. This may
be the only hearing that Congress conducts on 287 so I want to
make sure I get a couple of things in. Mr. Pendergraph--and--
first let me ask you. Aside from first getting returned calls
like Tulsa wasn't, what in the process do you think we could
streamline and improve for counties being able to get this? Is
it an awareness question, is it the time it takes to do it, do
we need more people training? What in the process of the 287
provision do we need to do?
Mr. Pendergraph. I think--I'm the treasurer of the Major
County Sheriffs' Association which represents the largest
sheriffs' offices in the United States and we've discussed this
frequently at our meetings. I think the majority of the
sheriffs--and I think police chiefs, too, because we have joint
meetings with the major city chiefs--I think they're aware of
the program. What shocked me is when I learned of it by
accident from one of my cohorts from California I came back and
requested information from a local ICE office and they didn't
know what I was talking about. ICE didn't know what I was
talking about. And I don't fault them for that but they got
right on it and then said, hey, there was a law passed in 1996
that authorized the certification and--of local and State law
enforcement officers. I think once the application is filed and
we kind of have that down pat about what needs to be said and
done as far as actually applying for this, they don't know what
to do with it apparently in Washington because they're
overwhelmed with work now that they say to me privately: We
can't support any more because we don't have the resources in
the field. I think that's where it needs to be addressed is how
much support is local law enforcement going to get once they
apply to see this 287(g) program. And I'll tell you on the
record that I got my people trained and ready to go to work
fully 2 months before my equipment was installed and had it not
been for Representative Myrick, I mean, pounding on someone's
head in Washington I'm not sure we'd have it installed now
because there was no one there that could make a decision about
who is going to do what. We're standing here trained, ready to
go and work on this problem and the equipment is not installed.
There is just--There is something there in the road blocking
everything that there's an attempt to be done to improve and I
certainly hope Alan doesn't face this problem but--he'll deal
with it but----
Mr. Souder. I have a specific request for you----
Mr. Pendergraph. Yes.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. And it will tell us a lot about
the attitudes of your association and others whether we can do
this. Clearly meth was something that came up from local law
enforcement, local counties up to the Federal and took forever
and the drug czar is still trying to figure it out--a cheap
shot deserved a cheap shot--and simply are blind to the meth
problem. That--Will at least the big county sheriffs'
association, if you could raise it with the national sheriffs'
association, would you first see if the association could find
basic data and we'll have our staff check this, too. It would
be helpful coming inside and outside. How many sheriffs have
asked this: What's the standard process of doing it; this Tulsa
type thing? The second thing is will your association go on
record saying that there needs to be more agents devoted to
this because those of us who are in the program are finding we
don't have adequate support. In other words, generally speaking
every association advocates directly for things that help them;
in other words, we need more cop grants and so on but, in fact,
it doesn't do us any good to give you more authority if the
support groups don't have----
Mr. Pendergraph. I understand. That's absolutely true.
Mr. Souder. And also I'm talking to the attorneys'
association because it's fine for us to do that and the U.S.
Attorney's Office can't or the local attorneys can't if there's
not jail and bed space but to give us a whole listing thing on
the record because if we can say in Congress this is--the
national sheriffs are saying they're willing to do this and
they could do their part but what they're running into is lack
of funds in these areas because there isn't this kind of
support that would be helpful in us making the particular case
with that. Mr. Cloninger, do you believe you would have been
cleared if you hadn't had this hearing today?
Mr. Lands. He still has some paperwork they need to sign.
Mr. Cloninger. My intention today was to sit in here and go
why do you all--have I not been cleared but, no, this hearing
has--I don't believe it had an effect on it.
I think that just chipped that along but I have been
questioned why it's been taking----
Mr. Souder. How long did it take you?
Mr. Cloninger. Well, we finished in May--our final
application process in May and June, July, August--4 months.
Mr. Souder. And when did you--so had you started a process
before May?
Mr. Cloninger. February. February we made the request and
when we received forms to fill out as to what we're willing to
do, what we're willing to spend, sent that in and received new
information and the program was evolving. If I can take a
second, the time we had started we had to get a T2 line for
communication purposes for your computers and I'm going to
need. That's a lot of money. So when Jim was going through that
and they would develop it to a DSL line so there was a change
even in the middle of our process. I think I'm correct in that.
[Mr. Pendergraph nods affirmatively.]
Mr. Cloninger. So it's a developing--It's in a State of
flux and I think it will change again before I even get started
but I think that change is what delayed it some- what. But I
agree that our local agents here--ICE agents did everything in
their power to get this through as fast as they can with the
block which----
Mr. Souder. What other major costs are you looking at that
will be the major burden of this?
Mr. Cloninger. The personnel issues. The DSL line, that's
going to be minimal, but personnel issues and then bed space
issues. A bed in the Gaston County Jail will cost the citizens
here $49 a day; U.S. Marshals are paying me $60 a day to hold
their Federal prisoners. We have already talked with the ICE
deportation team about how we would hold them. Supposedly under
the agreement if we--if one of my deputies decides to deport
someone then we're on--that's the way it's supposed to be--
going to have to hold that person 72 hours before he or she is
deported or sent down to a line or some other long-term
facility and after talking with Jim today I'm not sure that
will happen but that's what we're looking at.
Mr. Souder. One of our big challenges here is how to and it
was alluded to earlier and Sheriff Pendergraph said you have
Federal prisoners to help share some of that cost and as we've
watched illegal narcotics and other contraband, certainly we
have to watch this with terrorists, is that just like as we're
spending more money, certain things at airports and move to
other things, New York City, there's been an argument that all
the fund moneys spent out of New York, Boston and Washington,
DC, on terrorism but if you don't do your second group while
you're hardening your first group and then your rural areas the
terrorists--clearly there are A targets, B targets, C targets
and D targets but the danger here is that even if most people
were working in Mecklenburg County they're going to go where
the resistance is least and the smaller departments are the
ones, for example, the one in meth as well, and that's why it
probably took us so long to respond and that the costs that
you're talking about are going to get more and more difficult
as we move out which is why clearly we're going to have to
figure out in rural areas, suburban areas as well as the urban
areas and then depending on the urban areas your tax base may
or may not be big enough to handle it; in the declining city as
opposed to a growing city is a huge challenge be it in Los
Angeles in about a month looking at the rerise of gangs in Los
Angeles and Compton and the huge problems they have with the
suburbs getting the tax base and the city with a lesser tax
base or a suburb like Compton how in the world do you deal with
it? So we're going to continue to look at it. Anybody else have
any comments you want to make?
Ms. Foxx. One more quick comment. You asked a great
question about getting the sheriffs from the larger cities to
do something. Would it be possible to do a survey of the areas
that have received the 287(g) approval to ask them for what
could be done to make the process better in a general way so
that--I don't--something done on e-mail, I don't mean a massive
job, but if we could do something and maybe Sheriff Pendergraph
and Sheriff Cloninger could get some general idea. I'm just
thinking about an evaluation that could be done and then be
given to ICE to say here are some ways that this process could
be made better or could we force ICE to hire an independent
person to look at their process and do an evaluation to see
what's there that doesn't have to be done or some ways that
they could do that. It seems to me again that moving the system
quicker is one of the things that needs to be done and--and I
think the answer to your general question is something is
blocking it; it's generally called bureaucracy.
Mr. Souder. And dollars.
Ms. Foxx. And dollars. But sometimes it's just a clerk
mentality that people can't break through and I'm just thinking
about doing an evaluation that could speed it up.
Mr. Pendergraph. I can speak to North Carolina because this
has been discussed in the North Carolina Sheriffs' Association.
All 100 sheriffs in this State would join this program tomorrow
if they could afford it and they could get acceptance in the
program. They've made that very plain in our annual conference
in Charlotte.
Mr. Souder. Well, thank you very much for your testimony,
Ms. Moose. This won't bring your son back but maybe it will
help move the cause and thank you for sharing your testimony
today. Thank you all for your work. Almost all of our crime
solutions in America start with a local policeman working hard
on the beat that gets us information to move up and then the
dedicated attorneys who are upholding the law. So thank you
very much for being a part of this hearing. If you have
additional comments, additional information for the record
we'll keep it open for a period of time. With that the
subcommittee hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Virginia Foxx and
additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
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