[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3085-3086]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                TRAGEDY IN KANSAS AND IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. MORAN. Madam President, I wish to address the Senate in regard to 
a terrible tragedy that has occurred in our State. I start with the 
premise that our immigration system is terribly broken and the 
consequences of flawed immigration policies exhibit themselves across 
our society. It is hard to understand why nothing has been done to 
address certain obviously dangerous vulnerabilities and specific 
problems that put American lives at risk.
  Sanctuary city policies and indifference about prosecution of illegal 
immigrants arrested for dangerous crimes and the tolerance of 
bureaucratic redtape by the administration all contribute to a 
dangerous degrading of the criminal justice system. The failure to 
address illegal immigration at all levels of government has been 
accounted for in lost lives.
  Sometimes a government failure is just annoying. Sometimes it is 
deadly. Decades of broken immigration policy contributed to the 
situation that led to the murder of four people in Kansas and another 
in Missouri. The victims are Michael Capps, 41 years old, Jake Waters, 
36 years old, Clint Harter, 27 years old, and Austin Harter, 29 years 
old, all of Kansas City, KS, and Randy Nordman, 49 years old, of New 
Florence, MO. The man suspected of taking these lives is an illegal 
immigrant--a man who has unlawfully entered the United States three 
times. He has been arrested over and over. He has repeatedly 
demonstrated that he is a serious threat. Yet, despite these red flags, 
the system failed, and this man was free and able to commit these 
barbaric acts.
  The extent of the systemic breakdown in this case is sickening. How 
criminal suspects unlawfully in the country are processed is a failure. 
The policies are terribly ineffective. In the current system, justice 
is delayed by bureaucracy or obstructed, in some cases, amazingly, by 
design. A broken system--some people prefer it that way and work to 
make it so. Others simply permit it to persist. Regardless, this has 
resulted in horrific crimes.
  Sanctuary city policies and the laws that enable them must be fixed 
before the unnecessary loss of innocent life happens again. Failure to 
do so only allows more crimes like these murders and the spree of 
criminal behavior that preceded them.
  Congress needs to act now. The President needs to act now. The 
Department of Homeland Security needs to act now. Local governments and 
law enforcement agencies need to act now.

[[Page 3086]]

  The Senate's attempt to do just that has been stymied, but we must 
not give up on an effort to secure our Nation and protect Americans 
from harm. Failure to address these problems will only make the 
problems worse and will make them more difficult to solve later. 
Continuing the status quo means empowering career offenders, 
incentivizing law-evading behavior, impeding the prosecution of crime, 
and releasing dangerous and habitually unlawful individuals who have no 
place in our communities.
  The victims of crime like last week's horrors in Kansas City have 
been failed by their communities and by their political leaders. 
Americans and our communities will continue to pay the price for the 
failure of our immigration system and the refusal of policymakers to 
work together to fix it.
  Americans and their families will continue to pay--hopefully not 
again in the loss of life, but how can we guarantee that? We must act 
quickly. We must act now to correct these immediate problems, improve 
our Nation's broken immigration policies and laws, and stop the 
terrible consequences.
  The loss of life is a terrible thing, and probably in this 
circumstance had no reason to happen, would not have happened if jobs 
had been done.
  Kansans, Kansas families, Americans, American families deserve much, 
much better. These victims and their families--we honor them today, we 
offer our condolences and provide our sympathies--but these individuals 
and their families deserved better.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

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