[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 103 (Monday, June 27, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4583-S4585]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

      By Mr. TOOMEY:
  S. 3100. A bill to ensure that State and local law enforcement may 
cooperate with Federal officials to protect our communities from 
violent criminals and suspected terrorists who are illegally present in 
the United States; read the first time.
  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, by Friday a lot of American families are 
going to be packing up the car and the kids and going somewhere to 
celebrate the holiday or gathering in the backyard to fire up a 
barbecue to celebrate the Fourth that way. But one father will be 
marking the day quite differently. For Jim Steinle, Friday marks the 1-
year anniversary of the murder of his daughter. On July 1, 2015, as Jim 
Steinle was walking on a pier in San Francisco with his daughter Kate, 
the gunman opened fire, shot Kate, and she bled to death in her 
father's arms. Her last words were ``Help me, dad.''
  As outrageous as this is, one of the aspects that is particularly 
maddening about this is that the shooter never should have been on the 
pier that day. The shooter was an illegal immigrant. He had been 
convicted of seven felonies and had been deported five times. But what 
is truly maddening is that 3 months prior to his murdering Kate 
Steinle, he was held in the custody of the San Francisco Police 
Department. They had him, and when Federal immigration officials 
learned that the San Francisco police had this guy, they asked them to 
hold him until they could get someone there because they knew he was 
here illegally. They knew his background, they knew how dangerous he 
was, and they wanted to deport him.
  What did the San Francisco police do? They refused. They did not 
cooperate with the Federal immigration officials, and instead they 
released him onto the streets of San Francisco.

[[Page S4584]]

  Why would the San Francisco Police Department do a thing like that? 
Why in the world would they do a thing like that with a seven-time 
convicted felon, five-time deported person whom Federal immigration 
officials were asking them to detain? They did it because San Francisco 
is a sanctuary city. That means it is the legal policy of the city of 
San Francisco to forbid their own police department from cooperating--
from even cooperating--with Federal immigration officials. Even when 
the police would like to, they can't. It is against the law in San 
Francisco. So think about that.
  Even when President Obama's administration and the local police are 
in complete agreement that this person is dangerous and they want to 
work together, they want to remove this person and the threat he poses 
to their community in a sanctuary city, the local politicians override 
that and they decide it would be illegal for the local police to 
cooperate. So the San Francisco police had no choice. They were forced 
by their own city government to release the man who would go on to kill 
Kate Steinle. If Federal officials had called about almost any other 
crime--if it had been about bank robbery, a trademark violation, car 
theft--it would have been perfectly legal for the San Francisco Police 
Department to cooperate with the Federal authorities. But because this 
involved an illegal immigrant, the San Francisco Police Department's 
hands were tied. They were forced to release Kate Steinle's eventual 
killer.
  As the father of three young kids, I can't even imagine what Jim 
Steinle and his wife have endured and what they are going to go through 
this Friday. Sadly, the Steinles are not alone. According to an 
internal Department of Homeland Security memo, during an 8-month period 
in 2014, sanctuary jurisdictions--cities and counties and towns that 
have chosen to be sanctuaries--have released 8,000 immigrants during 
this period in 2014, and 1,800 of those released were later arrested 
for new criminal acts, including two cities that released individuals 
who had been arrested for sexual abuse of children. Not surprisingly, 
these individuals were arrested yet again for sexually molesting 
additional children because that is what these monsters do.
  Let's be clear. This is not about immigration. This is really not 
about immigration. The vast majority of immigrants in this country 
would never commit a heinous crime against anybody, but any large group 
of individuals is going to have some bad actors. With roughly 11 
million people here illegally, among them there are absolutely violent 
criminals. It is completely unavoidable. It makes absolutely no sense 
to insulate those violent criminals from capture by law enforcement.
  I should point out that the dangers posed by these sanctuary city 
laws are not limited to domestic crimes, as appalling as they are. 
Obviously, the sexual abuse of children and murder are more than 
sufficient reason to make sure we are not conferring a special benefit 
on these people. But the fact is, sanctuary cities are impeding our 
ability to prosecute the war against terrorists.
  I will give a case in point. Last month, President Obama's Secretary 
of Homeland Security, Secretary Johnson, took a trip to Philadelphia 
with a modest request, because Philadelphia has a very extreme and 
radical sanctuary city policy. So President Obama's Homeland Security 
Secretary went to Philadelphia and asked Mayor Kenney of Philadelphia 
to make very narrow exceptions to the sanctuary city policy of 
Philadelphia. Specifically, he was asking that the Philadelphia Police 
Department be permitted to cooperate--just sharing information is what 
they were asking for--with the DHS if they were dealing with a 
suspected terrorist or someone who had been convicted of a violent 
felony or someone who had been convicted of a gang-related offense. 
Just those cases. Just those. Mayor Kenney refused. The city refused 
and made no change whatsoever to their sanctuary city status.
  So as we gather this evening, the Philadelphia Police Department is 
absolutely forbidden from cooperating with Federal officials unless the 
Federal officials can prove that the person in question has already 
been convicted of a violent felony and they have a warrant for the 
arrest, which, of course, since the police are not allowed to even 
communicate with the Federal officials, how would they know to seek an 
arrest warrant?
  The fact is, none of this makes any sense. Imagine the Department of 
Homeland Security calling the Philadelphia Police Department and 
complaining that they discovered that the city has in custody an 
illegal immigrant who the FBI suspects is plotting a terrorist attack. 
So the Department of Homeland Security asks the Philadelphia police for 
information about this guy--when did they pick him up, did he have 
other people with him, who were they, what were they doing, when are 
they going to release him. There is a lot of information they might 
like to have. And they might say: Hold this guy until we get there in 
the morning so we can interrogate him and begin deportation 
proceedings. That would be a reasonable request from the Department of 
Homeland Security, but under the current sanctuary city policy of 
Philadelphia, the Philadelphia police have no choice--their response 
has to be and is ``Come back after the crime has been committed. Come 
back after he has committed his terrorist offense, and then come back 
with a warrant, and then we can cooperate with you.''
  Sometimes I wonder if we have learned anything after 9/11, after the 
Boston Marathon bombing, after the San Bernardino murders, and after 
this horrendous massacre in Orlando. When are we going to start taking 
this threat seriously? It is here. We see it. We are living through 
this.
  Well, in my view, we have lived through too much--way too much. So 
today I am continuing my ongoing fight to end these sanctuary cities 
that endanger all of our communities. I am introducing the Stop 
Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act, S. 3100, and it tackles two problems.
  Part of the reason some communities have chosen to be sanctuary 
cities is in response to court decisions. There are two court decisions 
that we need to address--one is by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals 
and the other by a Federal district court in Oregon. These court 
decisions hold that if the Department of Homeland Security makes a 
mistake in issuing a detainer in a request to hold someone, if it turns 
out that the Department of Homeland Security made a mistake--maybe they 
got the wrong guy--and if the local law enforcement cooperates, as we 
think common sense has suggested we would like to see, according to 
these court decisions, the local law enforcement and the local 
government would bear the liability. They can be sued. That is a 
problem for communities. In fact, it has driven over a dozen 
Pennsylvania communities, counties, and municipalities to say: We can't 
take that legal risk, so we will, quite reluctantly, become sanctuary 
cities.
  There is a simple solution to this. In my bill, the first action my 
bill takes says that when a local officer is complying with a 
legitimate, bona fide immigration detainer duly issued by the 
Department of Homeland Security, then the local officer has the same 
authority as the DHS official.
  A way to think about it is that the local police would be considered 
agents of the Department of Homeland Security for this purpose. If an 
individual's rights are violated somehow, the individual would still 
have every right to sue, but they would not sue the local police 
department, which was just acting in good faith in cooperation with the 
Department of Homeland Security; the person would sue the Department of 
Homeland Security. There would be no diminution of the person's legal 
rights or their ability to redress anything that went wrong; it is just 
that the liability ought to attach to DHS, not the local police 
department.
  With this change in the law, there would no longer be any pretext or 
any justification whatsoever for these sanctuary cities and denying the 
cooperation with Federal officials which we need.
  The second part of my bill says that once that is in place, once we 
fix that legal liability problem, if a community nevertheless decides 
they still want to be a sanctuary city, they still want to refuse to 
cooperate with Federal law enforcement, then they would lose some 
Federal funds. They would lose some of the CDBG money, the community 
block grant money, and I know

[[Page S4585]]

every Senator is very familiar with how much every city and every 
municipality gets because the local politicians get to decide how to 
spend it.
  In my view, if you are going to impose the kinds of costs on all of 
us that sanctuary cities impose, the additional cost for Federal law 
enforcement, the additional cost to the American people in living in an 
area where they are at greater risk--it is unbelievable and impossible 
to quantify the cost to people like Jim Steinle, who lost his 
daughter--if you are going to impose those costs, then it is reasonable 
for the Federal Government to choose not to subsidize that.
  That is my goal. It is pretty simple. Frankly, I don't think it 
should even be controversial. Leaders across the political spectrum 
have criticized sanctuary city policies. Former Pennsylvania Governor, 
lifelong Democrat, and former Chairman of the Democratic National 
Committee, Ed Rendell, has criticized the sanctuary city policies of 
Philadelphia. The Secretary of Homeland Security has clearly gone out 
of his way to try to get Philadelphia to change its misguided policy.
  Pennsylvania law enforcement officers from across the entire 
political spectrum, across the entire Commonwealth, all agree we got 
this right. Last October the Senate considered a similar measure, and 
it got bipartisan support, but it didn't have enough to overcome a 
filibuster. I hope now we are finally going to fix this.
  This bill is a simple, commonsense bill. I had this conversation with 
my constituents, and everyone is shocked that we haven't already fixed 
this problem. The bill stands for the simple proposition that the 
safety of the American people matters, that the life of Kate Steinle 
matters, and that protecting our homeland from violent criminals, 
including terrorists, matters.
  As the Steinles observe the tragic anniversary of their daughter's 
death this Friday, I think they deserve to know that the Senate cares 
about that loss, too, and that we are going to do what we can to 
prevent another senseless and avoidable death from happening again.

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