[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 105 (Wednesday, July 8, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4832-S4834]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SANCTUARY CITIES
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I first want to thank Senator Alexander,
and I have a few remarks to make about sanctuary cities and how they
threaten the safety of our country.
I am cosponsoring Senator Cotton's amendment to this bill that would
withhold Federal law enforcement funds to sanctuary jurisdictions. The
amendment, based largely on the provisions of the Michael Davis, Jr.
and Danny Oliver in Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act, which
we introduced a few weeks ago, ensures that jurisdictions that choose
to endanger their communities and the public at large by adopting these
reckless policies receive no Federal law enforcement funding.
It is a fundamental principle of law enforcement that individuals who
are tried in one jurisdiction and who also face charges in other
jurisdictions are held and turned over to the next jurisdiction before
being released because it becomes an extremely dangerous problem if
they are released before charges are disposed of in another
jurisdiction. That is being violated deliberately and openly by a
number of cities in the country as an act of defiance and disrespect
for those traditions of courtesy between Federal and State
jurisdictions and even county and city jurisdictions.
Congress has an obligation to ensure that limited taxpayer dollars
are not given to those cities and counties that refuse to cooperate
with basic Federal law enforcement efforts to remove criminal aliens
from the country.
I would like to take a few moments to talk about the life of Kate
Steinle. Kate was a 32-year-old young woman who grew up approximately
40 miles east of San Francisco in Pleasanton, CA. She graduated from
Amador Valley High School and California Polytechnic State University.
She worked as a sales representative for a medical device equipment
company and was precisely the type of person every parent aspires for
their child to become. Kate's family described her as ``loving, smart
and beautiful.'' Kate's brother said that ``she was the most wonderful,
loving, caring person.'' Kate's friends described her as an ``amazing,
very compassionate person'' with an infectious smile and the kind of
friend who was always there.
Last Wednesday, Kate had plans to visit her brother and his wife in
Pleasanton with the hopes of learning whether she would soon have a new
niece or nephew. Before leaving, she spent some time with her father
strolling around San Francisco and taking pictures at Pier 14--one of
the busiest and most popular tourist destinations in the city.
While on Pier 14 and in broad daylight, Kate was shot to death by an
illegal alien. Kate's mother, Liz Sullivan, described the horrific
encounter to the San Francisco Chronicle, explaining that Kate just
kept saying, ``Dad, help me, help me.'' Kate's father performed CPR
until the paramedics arrived and took her to the hospital, where she
fought for her life but ultimately passed away.
Her death was at the hands of Francisco Sanchez, an illegal alien
with seven felony convictions who had been deported to Mexico at least
six separate times, most recently in 2009. According to information
obtained by my office, this individual's criminal history includes
multiple criminal convictions and lengthy Federal and State prison
sentences dating back to 1991, including felony heroin possession,
felony manufacture of narcotics, revoked probation, and at least four
convictions for illegal reentry after deportation, among others.
In an interview with local media, this individual admitted to
shooting Kate. In the same interview, the individual stated that he
repeatedly returned to San Francisco because he knew San Francisco was
a sanctuary city where he would not be pursued by immigration
officials.
Make no mistake--in essence, that is what a sanctuary city is. Not
only do they not honor detainers--the basic law enforcement requirement
between jurisdictions--but they send a signal that ``No matter whether
you are legal or illegal, you are safe in our city, and we will do
nothing to facilitate your apprehension for violations of law.''
Despite this extensive criminal history of approximately six prior
deportations and no obligation to release this individual to local
custody in San Francisco--a jurisdiction that is known to release
illegal immigrants back into the public--Federal authorities turned
this individual over to San Francisco on March 26.
I question whether the Federal Government should have ever turned him
over to San Francisco. Perhaps they should have deported him on the
spot. But, courtesy says, San Francisco indicated they had another
criminal charge and they turned him over. The charge apparently was for
distribution of a controlled substance. On April 15, for reasons which
at this point are unclear, this individual was released from San
Francisco County Jail--an action that led directly to the death of Kate
Steinle on July 1.
So San Francisco filed a detainer with the Bureau of Prisons, which
had this individual in custody, and the Bureau of Prisons dutifully--
according to, it appears, normal procedures--turned him over to San
Francisco for processing of San Francisco's criminal charge. Then, the
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, doing its job, filed their
detainer with San Francisco in effect saying: San Francisco, when you
finish handling this case, he is ours to be deported. Being a sanctuary
city, however, San Francisco did not honor it.
Notably, within the same 24-hour period, across the country in
another sanctuary jurisdiction--Laredo, TX--Angelica Martinez was
brutally murdered with a hammer by her husband, Juan Francisco De Luna
Vasquez, an illegal alien. He had been deported from the United States
four times. Local police said this was the third violent encounter
between this couple and that Vasquez had also had a previous driving-
while-intoxicated charge and a charge for evading arrest. As a
sanctuary city, Laredo refused to even tell the Department of Homeland
Security of the arrest and denied Homeland Security the ability to file
a detainer with their jurisdiction. They just denied it.
These cases, colleagues, highlight the tragic and completely
avoidable consequences of sanctuary jurisdiction policies. Indeed, if
not for sanctuary cities and the Obama administration's continued
destruction in other areas of immigration enforcement, Kate and others
surely would be alive today. Her death could have been prevented, but
the extreme open borders ideology that rejects even the deportation of
criminals--that is, people who commit crimes other than the crime of
entering the country illegally--led to her death, as it has led to the
death of many others.
Although sanctuary jurisdictions are not a recent development, they
have been allowed to flourish under this administration. Let me repeat
that. This administration has allowed sanctuary cities to flourish. On
a few occasions, officials in the government have complained, once
about Chicago, Cook County, but no action was ever taken to pressure
Cook County to change. The administration has not only refused to stop
cities from acting in this way but has emboldened them with this
systematic dismantling of immigration enforcement.
In fact, while this administration has taken legal action against
State and local jurisdictions that have simply attempted to help the
Federal Government enforce our immigration laws, they sued them to
block their efforts to enforce the law or help the Federal Government
enforce the law--States and counties which have never attempted to
deport people, but they have taken efforts when they capture somebody
for a crime or for a DUI and find out they are illegally in the
country--they would like to be able to turn them over to the Federal
Government in some fashion so they can be deported.
This has been resisted by the Federal Government, unfortunately. In
2010,
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the Federal Government openly announced it would not undertake any
legal action against sanctuary jurisdictions for refusing to cooperate
with the enforcement of our immigration laws. Thus, while it had the
time and resources to sue States like Arizona and litigate such cases
all the way to the Supreme Court, this administration has not spent a
dime to take similar actions against sanctuary jurisdictions around the
country, and the administration was well aware of the dangers posed by
these policies.
Former ICE Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal
Operations Gary Mead said that sanctuary cities--and in particular Cook
County, IL--were ``an accident waiting to happen.'' That was obviously
a sound prediction, and we have seen the tragic results.
Not only has the government failed to stand up to sanctuary
jurisdictions, but two days ago--the White House is now claiming that
if Congress had just passed the Gang of 8 bill, the comprehensive
amnesty bill, then this would never have happened. But the Gang of 8
bill the President pushed so hard for would have dramatically increased
incidents of criminal alien violence, officially legalizing dangerous
offenders while handcuffing immigration officers from doing their jobs.
Law enforcement professionals told us the Gang of 8 bill would have
undermined the rule of law in America, not strengthened it. These are
the people who know.
Chris Crane and Ken Palinkas, presidents of the National ICE Council
that represents all ICE officers, and the USCIS union, respectively--
these two leaders of these two important organizations issued a
statement on behalf of their officers--the key officers who enforce
immigration law in America. This is what our Federal law officers had
to say about the President's idea that the Gang of 8 bill would fix
these kinds of problems:
The [Gang of Eight] proposal will make Americans less safe
and it will ensure more illegal immigration--especially visa
overstays--in the future. It provides legalization for
thousands of dangerous criminals while making it more
difficult for our officers to identify public safety and
national security threats. . . .
They go on to say:
The legislation was guided from the beginning by anti-
enforcement special interests and, should it become law, will
have the desired effects of these groups: Blocking
immigration enforcement. . . .
They go on to say:
[It is an] anti-public safety bill and an anti-law
enforcement bill.
Imagine if the country's chief law enforcement officer--that is, the
President of the United States--had spent that year trying to end
sanctuary cities and deport criminal aliens and enforce the laws of the
United States instead of trying to empower open borders activists and
fighting against law enforcement and refusing to enforce whole sections
of plain law through his Executive amnesty what could have been done to
end unlawfulness in this country and turn this country around.
Just to show how deep the disagreement was between the Federal law
officers and their supervisors--their politically-appointed
supervisors--they actually filed a lawsuit in Federal court contending
that their superiors were ordering them to violate their oath to
enforce the laws of the United States. They sought relief in the
Federal court. The district judge found merit in their claims, but
ruled against them on a procedural issue. That case is now before the
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
It is an incredible spectacle that law enforcement officers were
suing their supervisors--the political appointees of the President--
because they were being ordered to violate the plain law they had sworn
to uphold.
It is time to get our priorities straight. We need immigration reform
all right but reform that serves the interests of the American people--
not international corporations, not anti-enforcement zealots, not the
open borders lobby. They don't get to dictate to America how laws
should be enforced. Immigration reform should mean improving
immigration controls, not further weakening or eliminating them.
Just yesterday it was reported that a six-time deported illegal alien
in Arizona was charged in a felony hit-and-run of a mother and her two
young children who were seriously injured in the crash--six times
deported, he returns.
When they return, do they not go to jail? Are we just going to
continue to deport them time after time with no real consequence?
Mr. President, 121 homicides have been committed by aliens who were
released from ICE custody over the last few years. People who were
released after being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement
officers, illegally here--not deported but were released--have murdered
121 people.
So over 170,000 criminal aliens with final orders of removal are
walking our streets. ICE releases tens of thousands of criminal aliens
every year into our communities. The policies of this administration
have effectively nullified law in a host of areas. That is plain fact.
I have talked to the officers personally. I know what the policies
are. I know the effects of these policies are exactly what the
administration wanted, exactly what the special interests wanted,
exactly what the ACLU wanted, exactly what La Raza wanted. That is what
they have been asking for. That is what this administration has
delivered.
Now, when a murder occurs which becomes national news, they say that
it is not our fault; it is Congress's fault.
These actions have effectively nullified plain law. George Washington
University Law Professor Jonathan Turley--who supported President
Obama's reelection--has documented that. These are facts. The number of
acceptable crimes committed by illegal aliens is zero.
Congress must take action now to protect all Americans, including the
millions of dutiful immigrants who are in our country, many of them in
high-crime areas, to protect them from criminal gangs and violent
offenders.
Just recently, I, along with Senators Vitter, Perdue, Cotton, Inhofe,
and Boozman, introduced the Michael Davis, Jr. and Danny Oliver in
Honor of State and Local Law Enforcement Act, a bill named for two
sheriff's deputies in California who were murdered by an illegal alien
with an extensive criminal record, and, I thought, three deportations.
Talking to the widows of these officers recently, I am told that he may
have been deported four times--and had an extensive criminal record.
So this bill is a companion to the House bill introduced earlier this
year by the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration and
Border Security Trey Gowdy. It is a good bill.
Our bill is similar. In addition to enhancing cooperation with States
and local law enforcement and eliminating loopholes that allow criminal
aliens to obtain immigration benefits, this bill would constitute a
clear, strong, and responsible response to sanctuary jurisdictions and
other government actions. Specifically, it would withhold Federal
funding from sanctuary jurisdictions that do not cooperate with the
enforcement of Federal immigration laws or do not honor Federal
immigration detainers, provide immunity to jurisdictions that honor
detainers and hold aliens until ICE can pick them up, and provide a
general sense of Congress that ``the Department of Homeland Security
has probable cause to believe that an alien is inadmissible or
deportable when it issues a detainer'' for an alien. That would clear
up one of the loopholes being cited here to excuse some of these
actions.
By the way, I believe it is 300 sanctuary cities and counties in the
country out of 17,000 or so law enforcement jurisdictions. Some of them
are quite large cities: Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles.
The passage of these sections alone could do more to combat sanctuary
jurisdictions and protect the people of those communities and really
the country from criminal aliens than what this administration has
accomplished in the 7 years or so it has been in office.
It is time for Congress to make its first item of business the
immediate passage of legislation to cut off Federal law enforcement
moneys to sanctuary cities. Not one more parent should lose a son or
daughter because American cities are harboring criminals. In any
State--like mine, I was attorney general of Alabama--one jurisdiction
is prosecuting a person for a crime, and when that is completed and
another one has a warrant against them, they
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file a detainer. When you are finished with the criminal, he is sent
back, whether he is acquitted or whether he is convicted. This is basic
law enforcement. It goes on in every jurisdiction in this country.
The Federal Government holds people for State jurisdictions and the
State jurisdictions hold people for the Federal Government. I was a
Federal prosecutor for 12 years. It is done all the time. It is
shocking to me--absolutely shocking--that a great city of the United
States of America would not honor a detainer by the U.S. Government.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers should not second-
guess why it is issued or not. It is up to that jurisdiction to try or
acquit or treat responsibly the person they are now prepared to release
to them. To ignore that is a breach of the most fundamental
relationships between Federal law enforcement, and it is done for
political reasons by political mayors, generally, and city councils to
try to win votes, I suppose. It has no principle in fact.
I am also calling on Congress to move toward a series of measures,
whether as stand-alone bills, in appropriations measures or in any
other planned legislation, to establish immigration reforms that serve
the interests of all lawful residents of the United States living here
today. These are some things we need to do:
End the release of criminal aliens from Federal custody. We cannot
just let them go after having been convicted of a crime. They need to
be deported. The law says they shall be deported. It has been ignored.
Cut off visas to foreign countries that will not repatriate their
aliens. It is an absolute outrage that countries like China refuse to
take back people who are lawfully deported by the United States. Yet
they want us to give visas to them. We should cut off funding. We
should cut off their visas until they agree to promptly take back these
individuals. That is the whole basis of international visa law. All
nations know that. Most nations take their nationals back promptly.
This refusal by these countries backs up our system, costs us millions
of dollars in housing, and all kinds of other additional problems. It
needs to end. We can end it just like that if the President would take
action. The law requires it. The President doesn't really need a law to
fix that one.
Suspend visas to countries with high overstay rates. Some of these
countries have this huge number that get a visa and never return home
and they reach these higher rates. We don't have to keep giving visas
to countries whose residents don't return like they are supposed to and
at the time they are supposed to.
We need to close the asylum loopholes and eliminate fraud. This is a
huge issue and can be greatly abused. We need to end the catch and
release at the border with mandatory detention and repatriation for
illegal border crossers. This administration has ended Operation
Streamline, which is a very effective policy. It started during the
Bush administration and was continued for a while under President
Obama. Now they have undermined that.
We need to protect the work site with E-Verify. If a person can't
establish they are here lawfully with a lawful Social Security number,
they don't need to be employed.
We need to curtail an oversupply of foreign work visas to protect
American jobs first. The only immigration measures politicians should
be discussing today are those that protect Americans, that protect
American security and safety and American jobs and American
communities. More than enough has been done for the special interests.
They have had their day. They had their day too long.
Whether we are talking about employees at Walt Disney in Florida,
unemployed construction workers in California or truck drivers in North
Dakota, it is time for the needs of Americans who are out of work to
come first. We don't have enough jobs for Americans. We don't need to
bring in more foreign workers.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. SESSIONS. I am sorry, Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent for
one additional minute to wrap up.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SESSIONS. There is no more basic need than ensuring that all
Americans live in a safe, secure, and peaceful community. I believe the
legislation I have offered will take us in that direction. It is sound.
It is responsible. It is consistent with American law. It is well
within all of the constitutional requirements. I hope my colleagues
will be able to study it as time goes by and pass it into law.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes
in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I expect I will take less than the 20
minutes, just to reassure you, but I want to reserve that much time.
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