Date: 2006-09-21
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I stand to explain my votes on the immigration bills that this Congress considered today. I applaud our decision to pass the Border Tunnel Prevention Act . which would make it illegal for any person to build or finance a crossborder tunnel and for any person to use such a tunnel to sinuggle drugs. weapons. or undocumented immigrants. These tunnels have become remarkably sophisticated ways for lawbreakers to enter our country. and I strongly support this bill to ban their construction and use. This is. at least. a small step to better border patrol. But though we took one small step forward today. it is not enough. Instead of working on real reform. we passed the socalled "Community Protection Act" . This bill is not about protecting our community. it is about electionyear scare tactics and fearmongering. We need to fight crime and we need to deport criminals. But we can already d6 that. This bill does not deal with people who are in our country illegally. We can already deport individuals who are here illegally. Nor does this bill relate to nonU.S. citizens who are legally in the United States but commit a crime. We can already deport gang members and any foreign national who is convicted of a crime ranging from murder to shoplifting. This bill gives the Executive Branch unprecedented powers to deport legal immigrants who have not committed any crime. It gives the Attomey General of the United States the unprecedented power to declare any group a gang. And it gives the Department of Homeland Security the power to deport any noncitizen who is legally residing in the United States if they declare. without any dueprocess. that such an individual is a member of those groups. This means the Department of Homeland Security can deport a legal immigrant who has obeyed all of our laws. This violates our First Amendment right of association and our Fifth Amendment right to be treated as individuals and not as guilty by association. This bill also has an expedited removal process that severely curtails due process and could lead to erroneous removal of people who should not have been deported. This includes U.S. citizens who cannot provide proof of citizenship in the sevenday window. or someone abused or eligible for asylum who cannot build their case in time. We all want to stop gang violence. It is an insidious problem in my district and in the districts of many of my colleagues. But we already have laws to deport criminals. We need to stop wasting time passing laws we dont need to deport people who arent committing crimes and start working on real solutions to solve gang violence. Unfortunately. it seems this Congress consistently passes laws that allow us to avoid real reform. The misnamed "Immigration Law Enforcement Act" also passed today. is one such example. This bill should be renamed the "Pass the Buck for Immigration Law Enforcement Act." While it claims to simply "reaffirm" the authority of states to enforce immigration law. it actually distracts local law enforcement from their most important jobsafeguarding our communitiesand forces them to do the job that this Congress has repeatedly failed to do. We should enact real border security and comprehensive immigration reform. instead. we are passing the buck to our local communities and. without direction- or funding. making them carry out complicated immigration enforcement. Enforcement of our immigration laws is a federal responsibility. Lets not shirk that responsibility. Lets not pretend this is someone elses problem. The Montgomery County and Prince Georges County Police in my district are opposed to this legislation. They do not have the time or the resources to handle the increased workload that immigration enforcement brings. It is not their job. It is the job of the federal government. And we need to do our job. If we abdicate our responsibility on vital issues. we are failing the American people. Moreover. it is irresponsible to make local police forces handle immigration without giving them any additional resources or any training in immigration law. Our police are already overburdened. We cannot ask them to do our job. too. I want to be clearI believe that we should have tougher enforcement of our immigration laws. But we need to do it in a way that makes sense. And it does not make sense to pass the buck to local communities. This is another unfunded mandate from a Congress that repeatedly fails to seriously address the important issues. So today this Congress has approved a bill that creates a law we dont need to punish those who dont break the law and a bill that passes the buck to local law enforcement. When is Congress going to do the work we were elected to do? When are we going to pass real immigration reform and real security instead of superficial bandaid bills? Its time to stop playing politics. and to start protecting our borders. The material previously referred to by Mr. McGOVERN is as follows: