[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 42 (Wednesday, March 16, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H1412-H1416]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. 
King) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized to 
address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives

[[Page H1413]]

and to continue the deliberation here that makes this the most 
deliberative body anywhere in the world.
  I understand that the Senate might take issue with that. However, I 
am always happy to engage in debate with the Senators as well.
  I came to the floor because I wanted to speak, Mr. Speaker, about an 
issue that has cost scores and scores of American lives.
  Since the time I came into this Congress, I was surprised and, you 
might say, shocked and appalled that so few Members were paying 
attention to the reality of what is happening in the streets of America 
over the years.
  I think of a school bus that was run off the road up in Cottonwood, 
Minnesota, a few years ago. Four of the children in that school bus 
were killed. Two of them were siblings. Three families were hit with 
that terrible tragedy.
  The cause of that accident was a vehicle that ran the bus off the 
road that was driven by an illegal alien that had been interdicted 
multiple times and turned loose on the streets to recommit again and 
again.
  I recall that discussion. It brought home to me something that I knew 
logically, but I hadn't felt emotionally at that point, Mr. Speaker.
  If there are people in this country who are unlawfully present and 
the law directs that, when encountered by law enforcement, they shall 
be placed into removal proceedings, if we enforce the law when we 
encounter people that are illegally in America, then, by the very 
definition of following the law that requires that they are placed in 
removal proceedings, they are no longer on the streets of America, they 
are no longer driving vehicles that are running school buses off the 
road or bringing about head-on crashes or being involved in vehicular 
homicide or driving while under the influence because, by definition of 
enforcement of the law, they are not here to do that.
  They might commit these crimes in other countries, in their home 
country. That is the issue for the countries that they can be lawfully 
present in.
  But here, when I see the funerals of four children that come about 
because we had an opportunity to enforce the law and, instead, we 
decided that our compassion for the law breaker was greater than our 
compassion for the victim of the crime, you end up with four funerals 
of children that were riding home from school in a school bus that day.
  Now, it shouldn't take very much for people who are professionals 
that deal with this every day to understand that, that if the law says 
that they shall be placed in removal proceedings--you have a President 
who says to them instead, through Jeh Johnson, who is now the Secretary 
of the Department of Homeland Security, to the law enforcement officers 
who have pledged and take an oath to support and defend the 
Constitution--which, by the way, the President takes an oath to 
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.
  The very definition in the Take Care Clause of the Constitution is 
that he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
  Well, instead, the President has decided to essentially execute some 
of the immigration law that exists. That doesn't mean enforce it. When 
I say that, I say that facetiously, Mr. Speaker. He has ordered the law 
enforcement officers to not enforce the law.
  And the advice that came from Jeh Johnson to the law enforcement 
officers of the Border Patrol was, if you came into this job and put on 
this uniform and took your oath to support and defend the Constitution 
and you thought that it meant that you are going to enforce immigration 
law, if you think that is what you are going to do, you had better get 
another job.
  That was the message to them that came out here about 10 days ago--
get another job if you came here to enforce the law--if you are working 
for the Border Patrol or for ICE or for Customs and Border Protection.
  It is an appalling thing, Mr. Speaker, to think that we have a 
President who has taken an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the 
Constitution of the United States and to take care that the laws be 
faithfully executed and, instead, he is taking care that they not be 
enforced in case after case after case. And this poster I have, Mr. 
Speaker, is the bloody result.
  The title says ``Free to Kill: 124 Criminal Aliens Released By Obama 
Policies Charged With Homicide Since 2010.'' Now, that is not all of 
the homicides.
  Here is where they are. A lot of them are in California. A good 
number of them are in Arizona, Texas, and up along the East Coast. They 
are in Council Bluffs, Iowa, or in Omaha. Yes, they are in my 
neighborhood as well, Mr. Speaker.
  Now, that is 124 killers. These are criminals that had already been 
prosecuted, already been convicted. These are felons that had been 
released on the streets of America because of a policy that the 
President seems to think is a discretionary policy.
  That is not 124 graves only. That is at least 135 graves because of 
the multiple murders that have taken place after they are convicted. At 
least two of them that were released on the streets in the past were 
already convicted of homicide-related charges. That is how bad this is.
  The idea that we shouldn't enforce our laws even against people that 
are illegal in the United States, unlawfully present in America, out of 
some sense of compassion, and they might say that they don't have the 
room and they don't have the budget, well, that is not so either.
  I would just note some of the statistics that I have pulled down here 
over time. In 2012, ICE reported that there were 850,000 aliens present 
in the country who had been ordered removed or excluded, but who had 
not departed. That is 850,000.
  Now, they tell us that there are 11.2 million illegal aliens in 
America. Well, I don't actually accept that number. That is a number 
that has been constantly and commonly used here.
  I arrived here in 2003. I swore in here in January of 2003. At that 
time, the immigration debate was talking about 12 million illegals in 
America. 12 million. 12 million. The drum of 12 million was beat for 
several years. Then it drifted down to 11.5. Now it is 11.2 million.
  We are thinking that we have a crisis with illegal immigration coming 
into America. But the number hasn't increased? Have that many gone back 
home? Have that many died?
  If not, that number is growing, and I think it has grown 
substantially more. The data we are looking at is 11.2 million, and 
that is from the Pew Research Center. I think they do a good job. I do 
disagree with them on that number.
  If that is the case, out of 11.2 million illegals in America, 850,000 
aliens are present in the United States of America who had already been 
ordered removed. We call that law enforcement?
  Just about anybody in the world that has ever looked across and 
thought about coming to America knows that your chances of being sent 
back to your home country, if you succeed in getting into America, are 
nil. They are almost nothing.
  If you embarrass the administration, if you are such a violent 
criminal, perhaps they will find a way to send you back. But even this 
administration, when they want to send them back, the few that they do, 
doesn't push hard on those other countries to take them back.
  Now, every country in the world that refuses to take their illegals 
back, we have the leverage to convince them, I believe, to take those 
illegal aliens back, 850,000 of them.

                              {time}  1515

  I didn't divide that out, but it is roughly 1 in 12 of the illegal 
aliens in America have already been adjudicated for deportation, but 
they don't go, and we don't do anything about it.
  Here is another statistic. For every 10 Americans detained in Federal 
court--that's Americans--173 illegal aliens are detained by a Federal 
court. So I don't know why they gave me 10 of 173, but I can divide 
that out in my head. Federal court deals with 17.3 illegal aliens for 
each American--that would be an American, lawful, permanent resident or 
an American citizen that they deal with. That is a high, high volume of 
illegal aliens going through our Federal court system.
  Here is another piece of data that emerged from a study that I 
requested in 2005. This was a GAO study that shows that 27 percent of 
our Federal prison population is criminal aliens--27

[[Page H1414]]

percent. So more than a fourth of the inmates that are housed in 
Federal penitentiaries are criminal aliens. That is a huge percentage.
  If you would think that they are in there for immigration crimes, for 
overstaying their visa, or for crossing the border, no. That is highly, 
highly unlikely that they are incarcerated for what this administration 
would call minimal offenses. They are in there for other things.
  Here is another example. The illegal aliens represent 5 percent of 
the population, 27 percent of the Federal prison population, and 
presumably 27 percent of the Federal crimes that are committed as well. 
So that is a proportion of more than five times their representation in 
the population they are represented in prison and they are represented 
by the crimes that are committed.
  Now, we should not think that these are just data, Mr. Speaker. 
Crimes aren't just data, because for every crime, there is at least one 
victim. The victims pay a huge, huge price that is not compensated by 
the taxpayer.
  For example, our criminal laws are descended from old English common 
law, and old English common law recognizes this, that everything was 
the product, the property, of the sovereign, the king. If you went out 
and poached a deer, the crime was against the crown, because the king 
owned the deer. The king owned everything. So if you poached a deer, 
you killed the king's deer, and the king is going to have his justice. 
If you killed one of his subjects, one of his serfs, if you committed 
murder, the crime was against the crown.
  That is why, today, the crimes that we have are against the State, 
whether it be the nation-state or whether it be the State that we 
happen to be abiding in. So when you go to criminal court, they will 
say this is the case of the State versus whoever has the charges 
brought against them, John Doe, criminal. You will hear that announced 
at the beginning of the criminal case: This is the case of the State 
of, say, Iowa, against John Doe, criminal.
  The victim, if the victim is alive and survives and is in that 
criminal courtroom, they are going to be looking back and forth 
listening to the prosecution and then the defense go back and forth, 
and they are going to be wondering: Where am I in this equation? The 
victim is not in the equation because, if the State believes that they 
get justice, then justice is served, and the victim is essentially out 
of that equation with the exception of a few little things we have done 
such as to allow for and provide that the victim or the victim's family 
have an opportunity to face the accused and, actually, face the 
convicted.
  So we are descendants from that, Mr. Speaker. When the crimes are 
committed against individuals, the victims of these crimes are paying 
the price. They are paying the price with their lives. They are paying 
the price with their bodies. They are paying the price with whatever 
their treasured products might be.
  If they are a victim of assault and battery and grand larceny, then 
they have been beaten up, they have been pounded, they have been 
bruised and bloodied and maybe bones broken. Maybe they have survived 
an attempted homicide, and maybe their wallet was lifted and their 
credit cards or their car. The things that they owned, the things that 
they cherished are lost, and they have to heal up. We don't compensate 
them for their loss even though the State is an intervenor in a 
criminal crime.
  So the case of the State v. John Doe, criminal, should tell us that 
the loss of life is not compensated either. It is not measured. It is 
not quantified. The 124 criminal aliens released who have committed 
murders during this period of time is a small portion of the overall 
number of criminal aliens who were released who did commit homicides.
  But what are those lives worth?
  We just heard the gentleman from Minnesota lament the loss of two 
lives. It is tragic. I am sorry he comes here to this floor. I am sorry 
that he feels that pain. I am sure the families feel the pain. But 
these are mostly anonymous victims, the four children in Cottonwood, 
Minnesota.
  Kate Steinle--the story that I pulled here, her name is now a 
household name, Mr. Speaker--was murdered in San Francisco on July 1, 
2015. Now when I see an attractive young lady with brown hair, 
immediately the picture of Kate Steinle flashes into my mind's eye, 
standing there innocently and shot and killed by a criminal alien who 
had been ordered deported, I believe the number would be at least twice 
before, on the streets because San Francisco is a sanctuary city.
  Well, the sanctuary city isn't just exclusive to San Francisco. All 
over this country there are sanctuary jurisdictions. There are 
sanctuary jurisdictions in Iowa, at least 25 of them that I can 
identify, and they exist across the country, local jurisdictions that 
have decided they are not going to cooperate with Federal law 
enforcement officers.
  And furthermore, when ICE puts out a detainer order, Federal law 
requires that an ICE detainer order is mandatory. The statute that was 
passed directed the rules to be written in such a way that the detainer 
orders are mandatory.
  A year ago, February 25, I believe that day would be--I remember my 
date is right, but I am not certain on my year. It could be 2014 rather 
than 2015. But the ICE Acting Deputy Director, Dan Ragsdale, sent a 
letter out to hundreds of political jurisdictions, law enforcement 
jurisdictions, and said to them: This ICE detainer order that you have 
been getting, that you have been complying with because it is an order, 
it is really not an order. It is just a suggestion. So we are not going 
to enforce that, and neither are we going to protect you if you are 
sued for detaining someone that ICE has put a detainer order on.
  They essentially said: We don't have your back at the Justice 
Department, even though the law directs that we do have. And so that 
brought about more sanctuary cities, more sanctuary jurisdictions, 
entire counties that have decided they are not going to cooperate with 
ICE. So when ICE sends an ICE detainer order to a sanctuary 
jurisdiction--often, a city--their policy is: We aren't going to turn 
this criminal over to ICE. We are going to turn him loose instead.
  Well, when they turn them loose instead, they do so by the tens of 
thousands. And, you know, Mr. Speaker, that Americans are the victims 
of homicide as a result, some of it first-degree murder, second-degree 
murder, negligent homicide, vehicular homicide. Americans' graves are 
scattered all over this country at the hands of illegal aliens, 
criminal aliens, not only those that came across the border illegally--
that makes them criminals, Mr. Speaker--but those who are in this 
country even legally. When they commit a crime, they become a criminal 
alien.

  There are graves in every single State in this country, multiple 
graves in every single State in this country that didn't need to be. 
There are grieving families all over this country in every single State 
that didn't need to grieve. They didn't need to see their loved one 
killed, whether it was a car accident, whether it was a bullet, whether 
they were bludgeoned, however it might have been. Those lives could 
have been saved by enforcing the law. But, instead, the Obama 
administration does the opposite. They set up an affirmative plan to 
start turning loose illegal aliens who are felons, who are criminals.
  Here is some more data. In 2014, according to a U.S. Sentencing 
Commission report, it shows illegal immigrants represented 36.7 percent 
of Federal sentences, 36.7 percent of their sentences. I have already 
said that 27 percent of the inmates are criminal aliens. Then, again, 
it is about roughly half or a little bit more of them are from Mexico.
  The Obama administration, in 2013, released--and this number has been 
committed to my memory for some time--36,007 criminal aliens turned 
loose on the streets, and that represented 88,000 convictions, more 
than 88,000 convictions among those 36,007 criminal aliens. Of that, 
193 had been convicted of homicide.
  Now, when do you turn murderers loose on the streets of America, 
especially if they are deportable? If they serve their time--they might 
be second-degree murder, maybe they serve their time, maybe they get an 
early out--they go home to their home country. They are deported at the 
end of

[[Page H1415]]

their sentence. That is how our law reads.
  But the Obama administration said: No, we are going to turn 36,007 of 
them loose: 193 homicides represented by them, 426 sexual assaults, 303 
kidnappings, 1,075 aggravated assaults, all of that packaged up in the 
36,007. That was just 2013. That was the beginning of this mass release 
of criminals who are criminal aliens, deportable criminal aliens out of 
our prisons.
  In 2014, they slacked off a little bit. They only released 30,558 
criminal aliens, and they represented 79,059 convictions. That is the 
work that is being done by the Obama administration. I could go on with 
data after data.
  Here is one. ICE had been claiming to have removed record numbers of 
unlawful or otherwise removable aliens from the United States. Well, 
they counted their deportations differently than any administration 
before. So those that said they will accept a voluntary return when 
they are caught at the border, they will say: Well, we can put you in 
the van and haul you back to the port of entry and turn you loose to 
walk back across the bridge. If you will do that, we will count you as 
deported.
  That used to be just voluntary return. Now the Obama administration 
has admitted that they have essentially jiggered the numbers and 
changed the category.
  But even still, even if this isn't accurate in comparison to previous 
administrations, those numbers have gone down, from along the way, 
389,834, fiscal year 2009. It did go up a little bit the next year, 
392,000 and change, then up to 396,000, and then going back. The number 
in 2012 was almost 410,000.
  So you can see, Mr. Speaker, that number has dropped off by tens of 
thousands. Then ICE has since admitted to dropping in removals clear 
down to 368,000 in 2013, 315,000 in 2014.
  This number continues to go down, from up to nearly 410,000 down to 
315,000, almost 100,000 fewer deportations when they are counting the 
voluntary returns in that list. That means we don't have a lot of 
immigration enforcement going on, and the message and the signal is: 
Come try to get into America. We are not going to do a lot about that 
in this Obama administration.
  And what happens? Well, what happens is we have a Presidential 
nomination process that has emerged. Out of it comes, who got the first 
big bounce and spark off of making the pledge that he would build a 
wall, a beautiful wall, and he would return the people and end illegal 
immigration residence in America and put them the other side of the 
wall? That was Donald Trump. If Donald Trump doesn't have that issue, 
Donald Trump doesn't probably have a campaign. I am sure that it is a 
big part of what motivated him to run for President.
  Ted Cruz also, Mr. Speaker, has the most solid and cleanest record on 
immigration policy. It is complete; it is inclusive; it is anti-amnesty 
all the way. And, by the way, he doesn't make provisions for inviting 
people back in after they are removed. I don't think that takes a whole 
lot of prudence to hold that position.
  Why would you reward somebody that you needed to go to the trouble to 
adjudicate them for removal, deport them back to their home country, 
and then do as they said in the Gang of Eight bill? They have a 
provision in that bill that thankfully the House didn't take up. It is 
the ``we really didn't mean it'' clause in which they say, written into 
the Gang of Eight's bill, if you have been deported in the past and you 
are in your home country today, after the Gang of Eight bill presumably 
passed, you can apply to come to the United States.

                              {time}  1530

  We deported you before, but we really didn't mean it. We can bring 
you back in here. If we hadn't caught you in America and you had been 
here when the Gang of Eight bill would potentially become law, then, if 
you get to stay under those provisions, then you get to come back to 
America if you have previously been deported.
  I think that is lunacy, Mr. Speaker, to be going to all the trouble 
to enforce the law and then to reverse course with that and provide the 
``we didn't really mean it'' clause.
  That bill, by the way, had in it prospective amnesty. In other words, 
it didn't deal with people who would come in after it became law, so, 
presumably, they would be treated with the same kind of amnesty or pass 
for those who were in America; and those that had been deported from 
America get to come back to America, too, with some exceptions if you 
are a bad enough criminal.
  The logic of this is beyond my ability to reason with it, Mr. 
Speaker, but the logic that this country needs to reason with is the 
logic of the rule of law. We have to be a Nation of laws--not of men--
and the laws need to apply to everyone equally, not applied differently 
to different people.
  There has to be an expectation that the law will be enforced. If we 
don't have that, then we devolve into a Third World country. In a Third 
World country, you can get pulled over not even for not speeding, but 
you might have to pay off the officer in order to be able to drive on 
down the road. In this country, if that ever happens--I wouldn't say it 
never happens, but where I come from, it doesn't happen and I never 
hear of it--that would show a digression from the rule of law.
  We have to all respect the law. The law has got to be enforced 
against everybody equally. There has to be an expectation that the law 
will be enforced. Any country that has any value to protecting its own 
sovereignty has to have borders.
  We have borders. We know what they are: 2,000 miles on the southern 
border, roughly 4,000 miles on the norther border, oceans on the east 
and on the west. Those are the borders of the United States of America. 
We have water all the way around Hawaii. We know the lines in Alaska. 
We don't dispute them with Canada. We get along just fine agreeing on 
what our borders are. But if we don't enforce them, if we don't protect 
them, we are no longer a sovereign Nation.
  We allow people to stream across the border. We have had Border 
Patrol testimony here in this Congress within the last decade where 
they testified that they believed that they interdicted perhaps 25 
percent of those that attempted to cross the border. When you looked at 
the numbers of those interdictions and did the math on that, it turned 
out to be 4 million illegal border crossing attempts in a single year. 
That is roughly at the peak of this. That has diminished by a few 
million.
  But think of that: 365 divided into 4 million works out to about 
11,000 a night. About 11,000 illegal aliens come across our southern 
border at night. Maybe that number could be as far down as perhaps 
6,000 or so, but that is still the size of Santa Anna's army. The size 
of Santa Anna's army comes across every night.
  Coming across, sure, there are some decent people that are looking 
for a better life--maybe a lot of them--but 80 to 90 percent of the 
illegal drugs that are consumed in America come from or through Mexico. 
It is the demand in the United States that brings those drugs in here. 
We have a culpability in this, too.
  But just the same, the violence in Mexico, the murders--over 100,000 
people have been killed in the drug wars in Mexico--is all part of an 
open border situation that we have here in the United States, costing 
Mexican lives, costing American lives. Graves are scattered in every 
single State in the Union because we have an administration that 
decided not to enforce the law, even though the President takes an oath 
to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and take care that 
the laws be faithfully executed. We have got executive overreach time 
after time after time. He has reached into the constitutional authority 
of this Congress.
  Time after time, I brought an amendment to this floor, Mr. Speaker, 
that has cut off all funding to implement or enforce the President's 
lawless, unconstitutional amnesty actions, to cut off all funding under 
the Morton Memos, to cut off all funding to DACA, to cut off all 
funding to DAPA and shut down those operations that are outside the 
constitutional authority of the President, by my definition, by the 
definition of the majority vote in this Congress, and also by the 
definition of the President himself, who said multiple times--and we 
have him on videotape at least 22 times saying he didn't have 
constitutional authority to--I will put it in shorthand--grant amnesty. 
He

[[Page H1416]]

didn't use those words, but it certainly is the paraphrase of what he 
had to say. After multiple times of telling us all the proper 
constitutional interpretation, he decided to do it anyway.
  The President of the United States' restraint factor is not giving 
his word, putting his hand on the Bible, and raising his right hand and 
taking an oath to the Constitution. His restraining factor is not his 
word. It is what he can get away with.
  He demanded that Congress pass the Gang of Eight amnesty bill, and 
Congress said: Nuts, we are not doing that. We are not going to see the 
demographics of America forever altered by bringing in millions of 
undocumented Democrats in order to play into the hands of Barack Obama 
and the Democrats in the Senate and the House.
  We have a responsibility to the American people. We the people need 
to decide. That is why our Founding Fathers wrote in the enumerated 
powers in the Constitution the responsibility of Congress to establish 
the naturalization laws and, by inference, to write the immigration 
laws. That immigration policy is not to be set by the President of the 
United States. It is to be set by Congress.
  Congress wrote the law in 1996, the Immigration Reform Act, which 
Lamar Smith of Texas was so instrumental in, as a large body of the 
immigration law that we have to follow. That was the considered will of 
the people. It was the bipartisan, considered will of the people, 
signed by the President of the United States. Gee, that would be Bill 
Clinton back then, wouldn't it?

  So we have a country that is the unchallenged greatest Nation in the 
world. We have a lot to be proud of. We have a destiny, an arc of 
history that has been flattened. It has been descending for a lot of 
reasons--economic reasons, cultural reasons, failure to adhere to our 
oaths to uphold the Constitution reasons--but in a large way, it is 
diminished because we have so little respect for the rule of law.
  Of all of the things we can talk about with regard to immigration 
policy--securing our borders, ending sanctuary cities, making sure that 
local law enforcement works again in cooperation with Federal 
immigration officials, ending this idea that detainer orders are 
voluntary, not mandatory--piece after piece of this--an entry/exit 
system that tracks the people in the country and when they leave so we 
know what the balance is of those visitors who are here, and an E-
Verify system that I will say the New IDEA Act, my bill--all of that 
put together brings America to the right place. We have an obligation 
to turn this into an upending arc of history, not descending.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________