There has been significant activity in the 113 th Congress concerning legislative proposals to reform the nation's immigration laws. In June, the Senate passed an omnibus immigration bill ( S. 744 ) that addresses a broad array of issues, including immigration enforcement and border security, verification of aliens' employment eligibility, the temporary and permanent admission of foreign nationals into the country, and the creation of mechanisms for some unauthorized aliens to acquire legal status. The House, in contrast, is considering a number of stand-alone bills that would reform specific aspects of immigration law. The House Judiciary Committee has ordered several of these bills to be reported. Some of these legislative proposals contain provisions that broadly correspond with provisions found in the Senate bill, whereas other House proposals take a markedly different approach. H.R. 2278 , the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement Act (SAFE Act), is aimed at increasing immigration control and enforcement, particularly within the interior of the United States. Many of the SAFE Act's provisions appear intended to address and override court decisions that have narrowly construed existing statutory authorities for immigration enforcement. The bill would heighten penalties associated with violations of federal immigration laws; clarify or establish rules intended to facilitate the detention and removal of aliens who lack authorization to remain in the United States, particularly when such aliens have been involved in criminal activity; impose additional requirements concerning security-related background checks and screening of aliens seeking admission, status, or benefits under immigration law; and encourage states and localities to play an increased role in immigration enforcement. During Judiciary Committee hearings, several significant amendments were made to the bill, including provisions which would generally make unlawful presence by an alien a criminal offense, require the establishment of a biometric entry/exit system within two years of the bill's enactment, and generally constrain the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in the removal process. While the SAFE Act contains a few provisions which resemble those found in S. 744 , there are notable differences in both the breadth of the bills' enforcement provisions and their approach to the unauthorized alien population. The SAFE Act generally imposes more significant penalties for immigration-related violations and more stringent requirements relating to the detention and removal of aliens than the Senate-passed bill. Perhaps most significantly, the SAFE Act would make an alien's knowing unauthorized presence a criminal offense, whereas the Senate bill would not make unlawful presence a crime. In fact, the Senate bill would establish procedures whereby some of the current unauthorized population could potentially acquire legal status, while neither the SAFE Act nor the other bills ordered to be reported by the House Judiciary Committee, to date, make similar provisions for legalization. Indeed, the SAFE Act's provisions much more closely resemble the last comprehensive immigration enforcement legislation passed by the House, H.R. 4437 , the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005, though it differs from the earlier legislation on many specific matters. This report describes and analyzes the SAFE Act, as ordered reported out of the House Judiciary Committee. The report's discussion of SAFE Act is arranged by issue area, and considers how the bill modifies current laws concerning immigration-related sanctions; the consideration and review of immigration-related applications and petitions; the detention and removal of aliens; visa issuance and security; naturalization reform; federal immigration enforcement operations; and state and local involvement in immigration enforcement. It will be updated as events require. In addition to establishing a comprehensive set of rules governing the admission, continued presence, and departure of foreign nationals, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) currently provides for an enforcement regime to deter violations of these rules. Some violations may be subject to criminal fines and imprisonment; others are subject to civil monetary penalties; and still others, if committed by an alien, may be grounds for denying the alien admission into the country or removing the alien from the United States. The SAFE Act seeks to bolster this enforcement regime in various ways. It would expand the scope of many immigration-related criminal statutes, including by making unlawful presence a criminal offense. It would also expand the grounds for removability to cover additional types of criminal activity, and broaden the INA's definition of "aggravated felony" to include more criminal offenses. In addition, it would expand the immigration consequences of criminal activity and certain activities posing a danger to U.S. security (e.g., terrorist activity). Congress has established criminal penalties for a variety of activities that undermine immigration rules and requirements (and convictions for some of these offenses, in turn, may have implications upon aliens' ability to remain in the United States). Some criminal offenses concern conduct taken by aliens in contravention of immigration rules which govern their admission and presence in the United States, whereas others may be applicable to both aliens and U.S. citizens who facilitate violations of federal immigration law. Several provisions of federal law, found either in the INA or in the U.S. Criminal Code, impose criminal penalties for various activities that undermine immigration rules and requirements, including entering the country unlawfully, forging or using falsely made documents to satisfy immigration requirements, and bringing in and harboring certain aliens. The SAFE Act would make changes to several existing immigration-related criminal offenses, typically by widening their scope and by heightening the available penalties. Currently, under the INA, an alien who unlawfully enters the United States not only is subject to removal, but also potentially faces criminal sanctions. INA Section 275 makes unlawful entry a criminal offense punishable as a misdemeanor in the case of a first violation, and punishable as a felony in the case of a subsequent conviction. INA Section 276 similarly makes it a felony for an alien to unlawfully reenter the United States in violation of an outstanding order of removal. However, unlawful presence by an alien is not a criminal offense, absent certain aggravating factors. Section 315 of the SAFE Act would rewrite INA Section 275 and significantly expand its scope, making it a criminal offense for an alien to knowingly (1) violate the terms of admission or parole, or (2) be unlawfully present in the country. First time offenders would generally be subject to a fine and/or imprisonment for up to six months, but heightened penalties would be available if the alien had prior criminal convictions. A second or subsequent conviction for illegally entering or crossing the border of the United States would be subject to felony penalties, as would a second or subsequent offense for violating the terms of admission or parole into the country. However, a second or subsequent offense under the provision more generally criminalizing unlawful presence would remain a misdemeanor (absent prior criminal convictions). For purposes of the amended statute, "unlawful presence" would be defined with reference to INA Section 212(a)(9)(B), and would also incorporate that provision's exceptions. Accordingly, unlawful presence would not cover any unauthorized period while the alien was a minor. Criminal liability would also generally not attach to unauthorized aliens with bona fide pending asylum applications, battered women or children, or victims of severe forms of trafficking. Section 315 of the bill would also amend INA Section 275 to cover instances where an alien illegally "crosses the border." This provision responds to jurisprudence interpreting the current unlawful entry statute as not covering situations where an alien crosses the border while under the surveillance of law enforcement. Unlawful entry or presence would also be deemed to constitute continuing offenses until an alien was discovered by an immigration, customs, or agriculture officer, meaning that the statute of limitations for prosecuting such offenses would not begin until the alien had been detected by the designated federal authorities. Under current law, the crime of unlawful entry ends (and the statute of limitations for prosecution is triggered) once the entry is completed. The bill would also increase the criminal penalties associated with unlawful entry/border crossing offenses in certain situations. In revising INA Section 275, the SAFE Act also eliminates certain provisions that currently impose criminal penalties upon persons who engage in marriage-based immigration fraud or establish a commercial enterprise for the purposes of evading immigration laws. It is unclear whether this omission was the result of a drafting error or due to a belief that such conduct could be punished under other provisions of current law. Section 316 of the bill would amend INA Section 276, which generally makes it a felony for an alien who was previously removed from the United States to reenter the country while the order of removal remains in effect. The bill would expand the statute's scope to cover instances where a removed alien thereafter crossed the border without authorization, even if such conduct might not constitute "entry" into the country. It would also modify the available penalty enhancements for aliens convicted of a second or subsequent offense under INA Section 276, or who had been convicted of certain crimes prior to their removal. It would eliminate an existing provision in INA Section 276 which allows an alien charged with unlawful reentry, in limited circumstances, to challenge the validity of the removal order he is alleged to have violated. However, this provision may be in tension with the Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Mendoza-Lopez , where the Court held that due process considerations required that "a collateral challenge to the use of a deportation proceeding as an element of a criminal offense must be permitted[,] where the deportation proceeding effectively eliminates the right of the alien to obtain judicial review." Given that an estimated 11.1 million aliens are residing in the United States without legal authorization, it is reasonable to presume that many of these unauthorized aliens are committing some type of immigration-related document fraud, particularly those who are employed. The SAFE Act would modify several existing criminal sanctions applicable to identify theft and immigration-related document fraud. Section 312 of the bill would amend the federal statutes concerning fraud involving identification documents and aggravated identity theft to cover instances where the offender uses a means of identification that is not his own, regardless of whether it belongs to another person. Section 317 of the bill would rewrite Chapter 75 of the U.S. Criminal Code, which addresses immigration document and passport fraud.