[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 21]
[Senate]
[Pages 28795-28797]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               NATIONAL BORDER NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH PROGRAM

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, yesterday I introduced S. 2117, which is a 
bill engaging our Nation to fight concerning our right to control 
entry. It is legislation that covers many aspects of the problem we are 
having on our very porous borders. One part of this is utilizing 
retired law enforcement officers. As many people know, national law 
enforcement officers have to retire at age 57. We learned of their 
availability after 9/11 when the Transportation Safety Administration 
and our office was inundated with calls from these brave law 
enforcement officers who are retired, saying that they wanted to 
participate in this activity, and they are willing to do it for costs. 
The legislation I have introduced does include the very sophisticated 
type of a fence that goes along the border between Mexico and the 
United States and also with an army of people who can join those who 
have already demonstrated very clearly that if we have enough people 
down there, we will be able to secure our borders.
  I am cautioning any of our colleagues who are concerned about this 
issue not to be tempted to use military because right now our military 
is stressed. We have an OPTEMPO that is unacceptable as it is right 
now. It should not be taking on other duties. Besides that, with the 
enactment of S. 2117, that would not be necessary.
  Illegal immigration is at an all-time high, with around 1 million 
illegal aliens infiltrating our borders each year.
  My legislation focuses on empowering our citizens and law enforcement 
officers to fight this flood of illegal immigration.
  First of all, I want to make it clear that I honor the millions of 
immigrants that have come to this Nation, waited their turn, and gone 
through all the requirements to become American citizens to make our 
great country what it is today. I have spoken at many naturalization 
services and seen what these people have gone through to become 
American citizens.
  I agree with the 1997 U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform that 
measured, legal immigration has ``led'' to create one of the world's 
greatest ``multiethnic nations.''
  I also agree with the Commission that immigrants who are 
``Americanized'' help cultivate a shared commitment to ``liberty, 
democracy and equal opportunity'' in our Nation. However, I cannot 
stand idly by and watch this great Nation collapse under the pressure 
of uncontrolled illegal immigration.
  Roy Beck, Executive Director of Numbers USA, a non-profit 
organization dedicated to immigration reform, stated that ``a presence 
of 8 to 11 million illegal aliens in this country is a sign that this 
country has lost control of its borders and the ability to determine 
who is a member of this national community . . . a country that has 
lost that ability increasingly loses its ability to determine the rules 
of its society--environmental protections, labor protections, health 
protections, safety protections.''
  Beck goes on to say, ``In fact, a country that cannot keep illegal 
immigration to a low level quickly ceases to be a real country, or a 
real community. Rather than being self-governed, such a country begins 
to have its destiny largely determined by citizens of other countries 
who manage to move in illegally.''
  My bill, the ENFORCE Act, works to solve the illegal immigration 
problem in several ways. It will provide a way for more civilians and 
retired law enforcement officers to help the Border Patrol in stopping 
illegal border crossings and reduce the illegal immigration rate.
  Through the creation of the National Border Neighborhood Watch 
Program, NBNW, retired law enforcement officials called the Border 
Regiment Assisting in Valuable Enforcement, BRAVE, Force agents, will 
come and work alongside Border Patrol agents. Civilian volunteers, much 
like the now well-known Minutemen, will be able to report immigration 
violations to assigned BRAVE Force agents.
  The NBNW Program is modeled after the National Neighborhood Watch 
program, a collaboration between law enforcement, businesses, and 
concerned citizens who watch for and report suspicious criminal 
activity in neighborhoods to the local police.
  The Neighborhood Watch Program has proven effective in reducing the 
crime rate in areas where it is implemented. I am hopeful that the 
National Border Neighborhood Watch Program will have the same effect in 
reducing illegal border crossings as the Neighborhood Watch Program has 
had in reducing crime.
  I also believe that the BRAVE Force will provide significant 
assistance to the Minutemen, who are sacrificing their time and energy 
as they work to preserve our liberties and enforce our laws.
  Another provision of the ENFORCE Act will make it a felony to be 
illegally present in the U.S.
  Under current law, it is only a misdemeanor to be unlawfully present 
in the U.S. This means that if illegal aliens are caught in the U.S. 
today and are deported, most of the time, they can turn around and come 
right back into our country legally, without consideration of the fact 
that they were previously in our country illegally.
  By making unlawful presence a felony under the ENFORCE Act, when 
caught, illegal aliens will be entered into the National Crime 
Information Center, NCIC, database, a computerized index of criminal 
justice information (i.e., criminal record history information, 
fugitives, stolen properties, missing persons), available to Federal, 
State, and local law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies. 
They will also be banned from legally entering the U.S. for 5 years.
  My bill will also establish another Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement, ICE, office in Tulsa, OK.
  We only have one ICE office in the whole State of Oklahoma and this 
is not enough to do the job of enforcing our immigration laws. For 
example, in September 2004, 18 illegal aliens were riding in a van in 
Catoosa, OK. The police pulled them over and found several illegal 
minors, as well as cocaine in the van. When the police called the ICE 
office in Oklahoma City, ICE authorities told the officers to let the 
illegals go because ICE did not have the resources or manpower to take 
them into custody. So Catoosa police let them go.
  This is outrageous.
  This year alone, 12 agents of the Office of Investigations of the 
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement served the 3,500,000 
people residing in Oklahoma.
  Additionally, Highway I-44 and US-75 are major roads through Tulsa 
that are used to transport illegal aliens to areas throughout the 
country.
  We must provide our States and communities with the tools to arrest 
and detain illegal aliens. Creating a second ICE office in Tulsa, one 
of Oklahoma's largest cities, will help improve the lack of immigration 
enforcement in Eastern Oklahoma.
  I would also like to note that my colleague, Congressman John 
Sullivan, has introduced similar legislation to create an ICE office in 
Tulsa. Not only do I believe adding another ICE office

[[Page 28796]]

in Tulsa will help local and Federal law enforcement, I also believe 
providing specific immigration training for law enforcement officers 
will help solve our illegal immigration crisis.
  Our State, local, and tribal law enforcement are experiencing 
increasing encounters with illegal and criminal aliens during routine 
police duties. The typical officer often does not know the law, policy, 
and procedures for determining immigration status or violations--apart 
from or in conjunction with other offenses--concerning alien 
lawbreakers.
  As immigration continues to affect interior communities, a key to 
addressing situations that intersect with other law enforcement 
involves providing State, local, and tribal law enforcement officers 
with basic training in immigration law and policy. Rather than 
expending millions of dollars on traditional classroom training, this 
basic training can be cost-effectively accomplished using the Internet.
  Knowledge of basic immigration enforcement can complement law 
enforcement's core mission; should a local officer have strong reason 
to suspect other law violations without sufficient evidence to hold or 
charge the alien on other offenses, immigration violations may 
constitute sufficient grounds to hold a criminal.
  This requires basic familiarity with immigration matters; therefore, 
this provision authorizes $3 million for a demonstration project to 
establish such an on-line training program through Cameron University 
in Lawton, OK. These funds will be used to develop and facilitate on-
line training in basic immigration enforcement for up to 100,000 State, 
local, and tribal law enforcement officers in 6 to 8 States, similar to 
the 4 hours of classroom training provided to all of Alabama's state 
troopers in 2003.
  This system will also provide, at the end of the demonstration 
project, a ``return on investment'' study documenting the project's 
cost-effectiveness.
  Not only are illegal immigrants increasing by crossing the border and 
dodging law enforcement officers, they are having ``anchor babies'' in 
rapid numbers.
  Anchor babies are born to illegal aliens who come to our country and 
have a baby who is then treated as a citizen because it was born on 
U.S. soil. These babies are helping the immigration population grow 
more rapidly than the birth rate of American citizens.
  In fact the Census Bureau estimates that at the time of the 2000 
Census, the illegal immigration population reached approximately 8 
million. Therefore, according to this estimate, the illegal-alien 
population grew by almost half a million a year in the 1990s.
  These numbers are derived from a draft report given to the House 
immigration subcommittee by the INS that estimated the illegal 
population was around 3.5 million in 1990. In order for the illegal 
population to have reached 8 million by 2000, the net increase would be 
around 400,000 to 500,000 per year during the 1990s.
  Furthermore, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, CIS, a 
non-profit immigration reform organization, based on numbers from the 
National Center for Health Statistics, in 2002 there were about 8.4 
million illegal aliens, which represent about 3.3 percent of the total 
U.S. population. That same year, there were about 383,000 babies born 
to illegal aliens, which represents about 9.5 percent of all U.S. 
births in 2002.
  In the Spring 2005 issue of the American Physicians and Surgeons 
Journal, Dr. Madeleine Pelner Cosman says, ``American hospitals welcome 
anchor babies.
  ``Illegal alien women come to the hospital in labor and drop their 
little anchors, each of whom pulls its illegal alien mother, father, 
and siblings into permanent residency simply by being born within our 
borders.
  ``Anchor babies are, and instantly qualify for public welfare aid.''
  Between 300,000 and 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens 
because of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which 
says: ``All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and 
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States 
and the State wherein they reside.''
  These anchor babies are being used to enable their parents to skirt 
the law, cross our borders, and bring in additional, illegal aliens. As 
the law currently stands, because these children are considered 
citizens, it creates an incentive for more aliens to illegally cross 
into our country.
  My bill will end this incentive by clarifying that only children born 
to citizens or legal permanent residents are considered citizens and 
``subject to the jurisdiction thereof.''
  The ENFORCE Act will also address several issues including 
clarification of acceptable identification documents, verification of 
Social Security numbers and benefits, clarification of the rights of 
local and state law enforcement officers concerning illegal immigration 
and construction of a fence along our southern border.
  There is a growing problem regarding fraudulent identification, 
identity theft and foreign-issued consular cards in our country. 
Illegal aliens often steal a person's identification, such as the birth 
certificate of a deceased person, and use it to gain employment and 
other benefits.
  My bill will help eliminate this fraud by establishing birth and 
death registries for localities to have the ability to check a person's 
identification to ensure they are truly who they claim to be. It will 
also require independent verification of birth records of people 
applying for a Social Security number.
  The ENFORCE Act will clarify which identification documents can be 
used for official identification within the United States--such as 
driver's licenses, passports, etc.--eliminating the use of consular 
cards for identification.
  Often, foreign embassies, within the U.S., will issue consular cards 
to their citizens who are in the U.S. These cards are unnecessary 
because the U.S. government either recognizes foreign passports or 
issues its own identification documents to foreigners who are legally 
in the U.S. The majority of consular cards have been found to be used 
as identification for illegal aliens and have been called an insecure 
document by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security.
  Another provision in my bill will address Social Security benefits 
for work performed by illegal aliens.
  Under current law, former illegal aliens, who gain legal status, are 
able to receive Social Security benefits for the work they performed 
while they were illegal.
  My bill will end this practice by not allowing anyone to collect 
Social Security benefits for work performed while they were illegally 
present in this country. Our Social Security system is already strained 
and faces bankruptcy. Allowing work performed by illegals to be counted 
and used to further drain our Social Security system must stop.
  The ENFORCE Act will also address fraudulent use of the Individual 
Taxpayer Identification Number, ITIN.
  The IRS created the ITIN in 1996 to improve tax administration 
because it needed a more efficient way to identify and track the tax 
reporting of non-citizens, such as foreign investors, who could not 
obtain a Social Security number when filing tax returns and other tax 
documents. ITIN applications can be mailed to the IRS, submitted at an 
IRS walk-in, taxpayer assistance center, or submitted through an 
acceptance agent.
  A GAO testimony by Michael Brostek before the House Subcommittee on 
Oversight and Social Security in March 2004 revealed that IRS controls 
for the ITIN could be easily bypassed and that it could be used for 
non-tax purposes, such as general identification. Mr. Brostek went on 
to testify that the ``IRS concluded that most resident aliens who have 
ITINs and earn a wage income are not legally employed in the U.S.''
  This creates many concerns about use of the ITIN by illegal aliens, 
which is why my bill will make the ITIN look physically different than 
a Social Security number and not allow it to be used to obtain tax 
credits.
  Another issue my bill addresses is building a fence along our 
southern border.

[[Page 28797]]

  It is known, according to government reports, that foreign nationals 
from countries such as Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia have crossed our 
southern borders, not to mention the high number of illegal aliens from 
other countries.
  According to We Need a Fence, an organization dedicated to ensuring a 
fence is built along our southern border, a CNN poll has shown that 87 
percent of its respondents support building a security fence along the 
U.S.-Mexico border.
  The ENFORCE Act will direct a high security, state-of-the-art fence 
to be built along our southern border to prevent illegal border 
crossings. This fence will actually consist of two fences separated by 
a patrol road, ditches, barbed wire, and surveillance cameras. While 
the initial cost to build the fence is considered high by some, I 
firmly believe it will result in savings in the long run by preventing 
illegal border crossings and eliminating the cost of finding, 
arresting, detaining and deporting illegal aliens.
  The ENFORCE Act will also make it illegal to establish day-laborer 
centers and to assist illegal aliens in finding employment, much like 
the sites that are set to be built for illegal aliens in Fairfax 
County, VA.
  Earlier this year, the Fairfax County's Board of Supervisors voted 
unanimously to provide $400,000 in taxpayer funds to be used to build 
three day laborer sites to assist illegal aliens in finding employment. 
It makes no sense to not only ignore the large numbers of illegal 
aliens gathering in one place, but to enable them to continue to break 
the law by working in the U.S. and encourage others, such as employers, 
to break the law by helping illegals obtain jobs.
  Another problem we face is educating illegal aliens.
  Some states, such as Oklahoma, allow illegal aliens to receive in-
state tuition at colleges and universities. This is a slap in the face 
to out-of-state students who must pay higher tuition than illegal 
aliens who have broken the law and do not even belong in our country. 
My bill will address this problem so that illegal aliens will not be 
able to receive this benefit.
  I would like to conclude by sharing a personal story regarding 
illegal aliens who commit crimes in the United States and then flee 
across the border to Mexico.
  Last May, my friend's son, Jeff Garrett, was tragically shot by an 
illegal alien while Jeff was turkey hunting in Colorado. After he shot 
Jeff, the illegal fled to Mexico, where he is hiding today.
  I know this story is just one among many about innocent Americans 
murdered each year by illegal aliens who then find safe harbor in 
Mexico.
  I believe the ENFORCE Act will not only help prevent these criminals 
from coming across our borders, but is a good start to ending our 
rampant problem of illegal immigration in general.
  I ask my colleagues to join me in solving our immigration problem by 
cosponsoring the ENFORCE Act.

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