[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 21672]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   COUNTRIES REFUSE TO TAKE BACK LAWFULLY DEPORTED FOREIGN NATIONALS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, America needs to do a better job of 
protecting our borders. It is the job of the Federal Government to do 
so. And the Federal Government must do a better job of keeping 
criminals out in the first place.
  The Federal Government needs to make sure we deport foreign nationals 
after they have served their time and after they've been convicted in 
American prisons.
  But there is a problem and let me explain. Right now foreign 
nationals who commit serious crimes in our country and are convicted 
and go to our prisons, while they are in prison, they are lawfully 
deported by our immigration judges. That's a good thing. And after they 
have served their time, of course, it's time for them to go back to 
where they came from.
  But right now there are several countries that won't take back 
lawfully convicted foreign nationals. Those countries are Vietnam, 
Jamaica, China, India, Ethiopia, Laos, and Iran. These countries won't 
take back their convicted criminals. These individuals are really 
people without a country. So what happens to them? Because they have 
served their time in our Federal and State prisons for felonies, they 
are actually released back into our communities. They are people 
without a country.
  Right now there are over 160,000 of these criminal aliens roaming our 
Nation and our streets. These people have been lawfully deported after 
they've served their prison time, but their home nation refuses to take 
them back.
  So I am introducing legislation that will plug up this loophole. My 
bill will make it a lot more likely they will go back where they came 
from. This bill says that any country who won't take back lawfully 
convicted foreign nationals who have been deported will lose foreign 
aid. But China, for example, doesn't receive foreign aid; so what will 
happen to China is they will not receive legal visas for their citizens 
to come into the United States.

                              {time}  1815

  No more student visas for China if they won't take back their 
convicted criminals that have been deported. None whatsoever.
  The current law says the State Department may deny visas under these 
circumstances, but the State Department seems to refuse to send 
individuals back to their lawfully deported countries because, I guess, 
China, for example, is a trading partner and they don't want to hurt 
the feelings of China.
  My bill won't allow the State Department to ignore that portion of 
the law. Therefore, it will be mandatory. If they refuse to take back 
convicted foreign nationals, that nation will lose the right to come 
here legally. We need to make sure that these individuals don't come 
here in the first place, especially the criminal element. All sorts of 
dangerous things are coming across our wide-open borders. The 
possibilities are endless for what could be just walking across our 
southern border.
  We know about the human and sex trafficking, the drugs, the guns, the 
dirty money and the like. But what about chemical and biological or 
nuclear materials? Do we know? Well, we really don't know. We live in a 
dangerous world, and the criminal cartels that run loose on the 
southern border to me are just as dangerous to this Nation as the 
Taliban, and they are just as ruthless. Right now, they are in our own 
backyard.
  In Texas, we are doing what we can on our own. Last week, the 
Governor of the State sent the Texas Rangers down to the southern 
border. They are being deployed in high traffic, high crime areas. The 
Governor has asked the National Guard to support the Texas Rangers. The 
Highway Patrol, the Department of Public Safety, aviation resources, 
and the Texas sheriffs are all part of this team to prevent the 
criminal element from coming into the United States. But our local law 
enforcement is overwhelmed, so the Federal Government needs to get its 
priorities straight.
  Recently, at one of my town halls in August, talking about health 
care, an individual showed up and people in that town hall recognized 
who he was. His name was Ignacio Ramos. He and his wife, Monica, came 
just to appear at that town hall. When individuals in that town hall 
saw who he was, they stood, Mr. Speaker, for over 5 minutes and 
applauded the work of Ignacio Ramos and his partner and the work that 
they had done on the southern border of Texas. He and his partner, Jose 
Compean, were U.S. Border Patrol officers jailed for shooting a Mexican 
drug dealer. Their sentences were commuted, and properly so, by the 
prior administration. But it shows, Mr. Speaker, that our Federal 
Government doesn't have its priorities in order. They have them 
backwards.
  One of the few things that our Constitution actually requires the 
Federal Government to do is to protect the national security of this 
Nation. Border security is a national security issue, and foreign 
criminals that have committed crimes in this Nation and been lawfully 
deported should be sent back home. We should do the obvious things 
first when it comes to national security. If a foreign national commits 
a felony in the United States and is deported but the home nation 
refuses to take back its outlaw, that country should lose foreign aid 
and the legal right to have its citizens come into the United States 
under our visa program.
  And that's just the way it is.

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