As a bill headed for a vote Thursday in the
House that would punish sanctuary cities, both sides of the issue engaged in an
all-out war of words.
The bill ended up passing 241-179. It would
withhold certain federal law enforcement grants to cities that have policies
designed to shelter illegal immigrants from deportation. President Obama has
vowed to veto it.
In a hearing that preceded the vote, Rep. Louis
Gutierrez, D-Ill., bemoaned that the Republicans were “exploiting” the death of
Kate Steinle for political purposes.
Republicans shot back that her death could have
easily been prevented with a few simple steps that boiled down to one thing:
following the law.
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said President Obama
relaxed the rules on ICE detainers, making it optional instead of mandatory for
cities to comply. This opened the door for the ACLU to file lawsuits on behalf
of illegal aliens, he said.
“ICE detainers are not mandatory as a matter of
law. So this is not initiated by ICE, they’re reacting to the threat of
litigation by the ACLU, and by changing the word ‘shall’ in these detainer orders,”
King said. “I think we’ve clearly heard today the effect of that, and we’ve
heard it from expert testimony and from very painful experience.”
The painful experience was that of Jim Steinle,
father Kate Steinle, 32, who died at the hands of an illegal alien July 1 who
had a string of prior arrests. “This will make you cry too, and it happens
every day. This story happens every day in the U.S.,” King said.
In 2011, King said 25,000 criminal aliens had
been arrested in the U.S. and released. “So how many crimes committed? I did
the math, and it’s 48,000,” he said.
Another 30,000 were arrested and released in
2014. They committed thousands more violent crimes.
“So the revelation is breathtaking in this
nation all because we refuse to enforce the law,” King said. “And this Congress
saw it coming. I saw it 10 years ago. All because of politics, they’re
pandering to people they know are law breakers. This was 100 percent
preventable.”
The White House vowed
Thursday to veto any bill that punishes sanctuary cities, and called instead
for Congress to legalize illegal immigrants as the way to solve the problem of
criminals who shouldn’t be on the streets, the Washington
Times reported.
The veto threat came just hours before the House
was expected to pass a bill that would withhold money from states or localities
that don’t abide by a federal law that requires them to cooperate when federal
immigration authorities request help identifying illegal immigrants.
Family gets no condolence call from Obama
At one point in the hearing Rep. John Ratcliffe,
R-Texas, asked Jim Steinle if President Obama had ever contacted him since his
daughter’s death on July 1 in San Francisco.
“Has the president in the last three weeks
expressed his condolences to you?” Steinle, unable to give voice to his answer,
simply shook his head no.
“I’m very sorry to hear that. There’s been other
very high-profile deaths in this country, Freddy Brown, Trayvon Martin, and he
expressed that (condolence) to their families, probably because they were tied
into policies that he cared about like gun control,” Ratcliffe said. “This is
incredibly disheartening and troubling to me, because I believe the grief
you’ve experienced was entirely preventable and this administration has refused
to enforce the law and its policies have emboldened cities across the country
such as San Francisco to ignore the law.
“Today the House is expected to vote on a bill
that would deny certain funds to sanctuary cities and I agree with Ms. Vaughan
that this is just a good first step and we have to do more.”
Indeed, the Obama administration played a key
role in expanding the number of sanctuary cities by changing rules in how
detainment orders are applied, expert witnesses such as Jessica Vaughan
testified.
“I believe it was set off by the policy change
at ICE to accept that detainers were optional, not mandatory, and they did it
with no legal interpretation whatsoever as to what legal reasoning they had to
change that policy, but once that was done that provided legal cover for all
these cities to change their policies and stop complying with detainers,” said
Vaughan, a research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Vaughan said the rule change empowered immigrant
advocacy groups like the ACLU to bully cities and counties that do comply with
the law.
“It’s also provided an opening for groups like
ACLU to issue threats of litigation for those sheriffs that are complying with
detainers,” she said. “It’s essential to protect those that are doing the right
thing and upholding detainers all the time. We have to give them cover and
protection and qualified immunity from this litigation.”
Illegals committed 611,234 crimes in Texas alone
The Texas Department of Public Safety released a
report this week that reveals illegal aliens have been involved in thousands of
crimes in that one state, including nearly 3,000 murders.
PJ
Media reported a never-before-released
copy of a Texas DPS report on human smuggling containing the numbers of crimes
committed by illegal aliens in Texas.
According to the analysis conducted by the Texas
DPS, illegals committed 611,234 unique crimes in Texas from 2008 to 2014,
including thousands of homicides and sexual assaults.
“The report describes an alien crime wave of
staggering proportions exacerbated by federal officials unwilling to enforce
immigration laws,” writes Christian Adams for PJ Media. “The Texas DPS report
says well over 100,000 individual criminal aliens have been booked into Texas
jails.”
From October 2008 to April 2014, Texas
identified a total 177,588 unique criminal alien defendants booked into Texas
county jails, according to PJ Media. These criminals have been identified
through the Secure Communities initiative, in which Texas has participated
since October 2008.
Morale plummets among border agents
Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., a former district
attorney in Colorado, said he has seen changes in the morale of ICE agents. “Many
of the agents I deal with feel they have been handcuffed by this
administration. Is that the same thing you see?” he asked Sheriff Scott Jones
of Sacramento County, who testified at Thursday’s hearing. “Yes most
definitely. Even though they raised the pay,” Jones said. “Can you raise the
salary of a law enforcement officer enough to ignore crime?” Buck asked. “No,
Sir. It’s a calling. We don’t choose law enforcement; it chooses us.” “And you
say there is a decrease in enforcement as a result of the administration
policy?” “Oh absolutely,” Jones said.
Number of sanctuary cities growing
‘exponentially’
“This administration last year released 30,000
criminal aliens, 28,000 of them voluntarily, and they committed thousands of
the worse crimes imaginable,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. “… And the number
of sanctuary cities has increased exponentially under this administration for
one reason – it has done nothing to stop them.”
There are now more than 250 sanctuary cities and
counties in the U.S. The reason most cities give for not turning illegals over
to federal agents is that illegals need this protection or they will not report
crimes.
“I believe it’s a specious argument, totally
anecdotal, and I’ve never seen one shred of evidence that they don’t report
crimes. In fact, just the opposite has been found in one study I’ve seen,”
Smith said. “The main reason is the language barrier another study found, not
the fear of being turned over to immigration authorities. A third study
confirmed this. It would be nice if just once the media would report just one
of these studies. It seems to me more crimes are committed as a result of this
policy not fewer.”
Smith said the victims of these crimes are not
Republicans, not Democrats, “these are Americans,” and they should not be
placed in harm’s way by cities unwilling to follow the law.”
87 percent of illegal aliens can stay
Also Thursday, a left-leaning immigration
think-tank reported that Obama’s executive actions on immigration shielded up
to 87 percent of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country
from any fear of being deported.
As part of his
unilateral declaration of amnesty in November, Obama announced a program to
proactively grant a temporary deportation amnesty to as many as 5 million
illegal immigrants. But he also directed immigration agents not to bother
deporting millions of others, even though they weren’t eligible for the official
amnesty, which grants work permits and other benefits, the Washington
Times reported Thursday.
The orders given to immigration agents were
dubbed enforcement “priorities,” and they instructed agents not to bother
arresting or deporting anyone who didn’t meet the top priority levels.
“Implementation of the new enforcement
priorities is likely to affect about 9.6 million people,” said Marc Rosenblum, author
of the new study at the Migration Policy Institute.
‘Sanctuary’ doesn’t mean coddling criminals,
Democrat says
Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas, said Democrats
do not view sanctuary cities as “coddling criminals.
“In no way do those of us in favor of
immigration reform view those (sanctuary cities) as coddling criminals. I wish
the clock would be turned back on this tragic circumstance (involving Kate
Steinle),” Jackson-Lee said. “We wish this had not happened. What did not
happen was the simple act of a phone call revealing Mr. Lopez’s status. The
name ‘sanctuary cities’ denotes a problem for people, of harboring criminals
and bad actors and I want you to know that is not the case. It was utilized
because people did not speak English. The name ‘sanctuary’ comes out of a
religious basis of sanctuary, helping people in need. Not a refuge for crooks
and criminals.”
King, the Iowa congressman, told Jim Steinle
that “some of us I want to assure you we have been trying to push this Congress
to do the right thing for years. In 2004 witnesses were testifying then about
those dying trying to get across the Rio Grande. I asked how many Americans had
died at the hands of those who made it into the U.S.? And witness said he
didn’t have number but he could assure me it was more than had been killed by
9/11.”
Rep. David Trott, R-Mich, said he was going to
vote for HR 3009, the bill that would withhold certain police funding from
cities and counties that act as “sanctuaries” for illegal criminal aliens.
“I’m going to vote for it this afternoon, but it
really has to be just a first step. It targets $800,000 going to a local
sheriff, but I think we have to go further up-stream,” Trott said.
Congress has ceded its constitutional authority
“I do agree with you that money talks,” said
Vaughan. “In most cases, sanctuary policies are not something law enforcement
asks for, they’re imposed upon them by elected officials. So money is a way to
define what a sanctuary city is and I think it should be any city that does not
comply with all immigration laws all the time. We know the administration is
not going to address this on their own, they’ve said as much, so Congress needs
to reestablish its constitutional authority.”
“We’re going to carry forward with this,” said
Jim Steinle. “For Kate.”
“These things are fixable,” said Jones, the
Sacramento sheriff. “There just has to be a desire and a political will.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said he thought
Congress was “missing the boat” if they focus solely on felonies for immigrants
who want to be in this country.
“All misdemeanors are not the same,” Gowdy said.
“This obsession we have with felons, that we can only deport felons, is that
something that needs to be changed?”
“The best predictor of future behavior is past
experience,” Jones said.
Gowdy said that of the 11 million illegal aliens
now in the country, about 2 million have committed felonies or serious
misdemeanors.
“Let’s err on side of being conservative, let’s
say it’s 1 million. What is the administration’s plan to prevent that 1 million
from re-offending? If the strategy is to wait for that 1 million to re-offend,
someone is going to be apologizing to a lot more American families,” Gowdy
said. “What is our plan to identify that universe before they re-offend?”
Silence gripped the chamber.
“Not all at once,” Gowdy said.
“I want to close the same way I started by
thanking Mr. Steinle,” Gowdy said. “I could not do what you have done. I could
not have the grace. I couldn’t do it. So, thanks.”
http://www.wnd.com/2015/07/house-slams-door-on-sanctuary-cities-obama-vows-veto/
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