[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 1598-1599]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              IMMIGRATION

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, last week, about the time Congress 
recessed, the President's immigration plan was leaked to the press and 
was commented on generally. A group of Senators here have been trying 
to work on a comprehensive plan and expressed dismay at what it 
contained and said it was not acceptable.
  A brief review of the enforcement section of the President's 
immigration plan confirms, I think, what my concern has been all along. 
It is a smoking gun, in truth, that demonstrates this President is not 
serious about enforcement. That is where we are. Any immigration plan 
this Nation implements has to be founded on the simple legal principle 
that people can come to our country in generous numbers, as they always 
have done, but they should wait their turn. There should be a lawful 
system. You can't have a lawful system if you are not prepared, not 
willing, and not committed to ensuring that the laws are enforced.
  What we have seen for the last several years is very dramatic. In 
point after point, I, formerly a Federal prosecutor for almost 15 
years, can tell you it effectively neutralized the ability of our 
current laws to be enforced.
  This bill is confirmation the President hasn't had a change of heart. 
He hasn't had a change of heart. They are continuing to talk as if they 
expect and plan to establish a lawful system of immigration. When you 
get down to it and read the language of the legislation, it is not 
there.
  Here are some examples of what the President thinks amounts to 
enforcement. This is so sad. I will say, with absolute confidence, if 
the President of the United States had done what he sort of said he was 
going to do in 2008 when he was running for office, he would make this 
legal system work. If he had invested time, effort, leadership, moral 
authority, and maybe a little more money--but it won't take a whole lot 
of money--and begin to show the kind of progress we need to have, show 
a commitment he would work to enforce the law in the future, he would 
be in a much better position to ask for a large reform of law.
  Let's look at what his plan reveals. It explicitly, openly, and 
directly prohibits State and local governments from enforcing 
immigration laws and from even asking someone for their immigration 
status.
  We have former Governors here in the Senate, former State police 
superintendents--and I have dealt with this issue for a very long 
time--that is a stunning development. There are only about maybe 20,000 
Federal agents dealing with immigration. There are 600,000 State and 
local law enforcement officers, in every county, city, hamlet, and town 
in America who are the ones who come in contact every single day with 
people in their areas for drunkenness, fighting, burglaries, and drugs. 
When they find somebody in the course of doing their duties, they 
discover people who are here illegally.
  We want to have a relationship with them and to utilize their 
capabilities. The Federal Government can then respond, identify the 
person, and see what the truth is about their background. This 
eliminates that and steps

[[Page 1599]]

backward from some of the progress we have slowly made, some at my 
insistence, over the last several years.
  The proposal the President put forth eliminates the congressional 
requirement that the Department of Homeland Security put in place a 
biometric exit system for those who enter the country legally but 
overstay their visas. People come into the country on a visa and don't 
ever leave. Experts are telling us as many as 40 percent of the people 
who are here illegally today overstayed their visas. They need to clock 
in when they come in, but there is no clocking out. We have no real 
idea who came and overstayed their visas.
  The President's plan eliminates a legal requirement that has been in 
place for approximately 17-plus years, which required a biometric exit 
system to clock out people when they come in. It is not hard to require 
them to pay a few dollars to purchase a card, and when you exit, it 
will be read like your credit card. You exit and you are clocked out. 
We have some control over that.
  The proposal from the President restricts the ability of Federal, 
State, and local law enforcement agencies to obtain information 
regarding whether a person is illegally present in the United States. 
Think about this. It would prohibit Federal, State, and local law 
enforcement agencies, particularly law enforcement agencies that need 
to know something about a person they may have come in contact with in 
the course of their public safety duties, to know whether they are 
legally in the country.
  This means if a law enforcement agency is holding an illegal 
immigrant for a criminal offense not deemed serious enough--a criminal 
offense, but somebody in Washington and Homeland Security said is not 
serious enough--the law enforcement agency cannot contact Federal 
authorities.
  This also means States with laws that require a determination of 
immigration status will no longer be able to use Federal databases to 
determine if a person is eligible for a driver's license, for example. 
You need to be able to turn somebody down for a driver's license if you 
can't check to see if they are lawfully in the country.
  This is something I have worked hard on over the years, for a decade. 
It puts the final nail in the coffin of the 287(g) Program. That 
program states that State and local law enforcement officers are no 
longer allowed to function as immigration officers.
  We had a program the Federal Government did not want, really, the 
politicians did not want to see happen. The law enforcement officers 
wanted it, and this was a program which would allow Federal immigration 
officials to train State and local law officers--some of them at the 
prisons, some of them in State offices, some of them in regional 
offices--how to deal with people who are in the country illegally.
  The average 19-year-old police officer in Middleburg, VA, or in 
Monroeville, AL, may arrest a mayor for fraud or assault, but needs to 
take 2 weeks of training before he can be certified to arrest somebody 
illegally in the country, not even a citizen. This is the way it is 
working in the real world. It had some beneficial aspects. It is 
something I supported and thought we should expand nationwide.
  There are highly trained people within State law enforcement, 
officers who are trying to cooperate with the Federal agents to try to 
create a system that will actually work. The President's plan would 
apparently eliminate that.
  The President's plan would allow private individuals to hire border 
patrol agents to protect them and their property, when it is the 
federal government should be fulfilling its duty to protect them 
itself.
  Is this a capitulation? You have a situation in which you are being 
basically invaded, the sovereign territory of the United States. It is 
not just a private individual's farm, ranch, property, it is U.S. 
territory. It should be protected from those unlawfully able to go 
there. They shouldn't have to hire their own police officers.
  It includes a feel-good measure such as giving illegal immigrants 
free legal representation and creating border community liaison 
officers, in part to receive complaints about Border Patrol agents.
  It allows the Attorney General to cancel deportation of criminal 
aliens convicted of aggravated felonies if they do not serve a sentence 
of 5 or more years. The law says if you are convicted of offenses and 
you are apprehended here illegally, you should be deported. It states 
this is only for serious offenses and you received time in jail, 
Federal felony offenses.
  The President's plan goes even farther than that. It says to the 
Attorney General, if they served less than 5 years, he may waive that 
and not follow the law and deport people who violated the law. It gives 
the Attorney General authority to waive other legal requirements as 
well.
  The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is directed to 
provide appropriate training to agents enforcing laws and goes into a 
great deal of training of civil rights and that sort of thing that is 
required.
  There is no mention of interior enforcement. There are no measures to 
secure our borders.
  As I have stated, I have just begun to review this plan. What I have 
read causes me great concern and confirms the suspicions I have had all 
along, which means when this legislation goes from some sort of outline 
that sounds good in theory, the actual legislation is not going to be 
what it is promised to be. Why did I say that? Because it happened in 
2006 and 2007.
  The bill did not fulfill the promises their sponsors made of it when 
it was carefully examined. When we saw that, the American people spoke 
out, and it went away.
  If you don't have a lawful system that effectively requires 
enforcement of the law, you are not serious about protecting people in 
this country from illegal workers who would take their jobs and have 
the net effect of pulling down their wages.
  We already have the problem that the President is suing States that 
want to help the Federal Government enforce their laws. He has had his 
own United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents sue him, 
the Director of ICE, and the Secretary of Homeland Security for 
blocking them from being able to do their legal duty to enforce the 
law. That is going forward. They voted unanimously no confidence in Mr. 
Morton, the head of the United States Immigration and Customs 
Enforcement agency. And there are a lot of other problems.
  I want to say, in sum, we have just begun to review the President's 
leaked plan and there are massive holes in it. It reveals a continued 
agenda to simply not allow a lawful system of immigration to be 
established in America and, therefore, it is unacceptable. I believe 
and am afraid that same mentality will impact the negotiations. We will 
end up, no matter how hard people try, with an inability to reach an 
agreement on a kind of plan that will actually work.
  What needs to happen is we need to continue our generous, historic 
affirmation of immigration where we welcome people to our country in 
numbers that are very large, but we believe people should come 
lawfully. People who aren't entitled to come should not be allowed to 
enter. The people who come here should serve the national interest, not 
some group's special interests. If we do that, we could be proud of 
that system. I am so deeply disappointed that the President fails to 
meet those qualifications.
  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

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