Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect Americans Act -- Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, I can still remember the day in June a few years ago, June 27, 2013--2 1/2 years ago. The Senate gathered and voted on comprehensive immigration reform. The vote was 68 to 22. The bill meant a lot to many of us. Eight of us--four Democrats and four Republicans--had literally worked for months trying to craft a bill to address the massive immigration system in America, a system that is terribly broken.

I think it surprised a lot of people, but we did it. Democrats and Republicans agreeing on something--there is a headliner. Who sat across the table? Not an easy jury to decide any issue when it came to Senate business. On our side of the table were Chuck Schumer of New York, chair of the Senate immigration subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee at that point; myself; Bob Menendez, Hispanic American Senator from the State of New Jersey; and Michael Bennet of Colorado--four of us.

On the opposite side of the table, John McCain led the effort on the Republican side, along with Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had a background in law enforcement in the military and is currently running for President. Next to him, Marco Rubio from the State of Florida, Cuban American, came to this undertaking.

He, too, is running for President of the United States; and Jeff Flake of Arizona, a conservative Republican.

We worked for months. We went through every provision and came to a bipartisan agreement to move the bill forward. We passed it 68 to 22. I think it would have been a dramatic improvement over the current laws or lack of laws in America.

The House of Representatives refused to call it up, wouldn't even bring the matter before its committees, and never had a debate on any immigration issue in the 2 1/2 years since. They missed an opportunity, an opportunity to do something important and a rare opportunity where Democrats and Republicans happened to agree on a solution. That is hard to come by in this place.

This bill would have strengthened border security, cracked down on illegal immigration, protected American workers, and established a tough but fair path for 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country who are currently living here, and it gave them a path to legal status. They would pay their taxes, pay their fines, go through a criminal background check, and then they would be eligible--not before then.

Democrats were in the majority of the Senate at that moment. We reached across the aisle to work with Republicans, so the bill was truly bipartisan. Well, it is a shame that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives would not even consider the bill. We asked them: Just call the bill. If it is going to be defeated, call it.

No, we are not going to consider any immigration reform--and they have not.

We are in a new Senate now, a new Senate under control of the other party, and what has been the approach to immigration? Unfortunately, little time has been spent trying to find common ground. First, some Senate Republicans threatened to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. This is the Department that not only has us take our shoes off at the airport, they are literally trying to protect us from another act of terrorism in the United States. For months, the Senate Republicans refused to pass an appropriations bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security until the Democrats would accept anti-immigrant amendments. After we repeatedly rejected this approach, they finally relented and passed a clean appropriations bill for this important Department for America's security.

Now here we go again. Some Senate Republicans have brought partisan legislation to the floor--and understand this--to defund, remove the funding from law enforcement efforts in this country. I don't know what is happening in many places, but I do know what is happening in the Midwest. We have seen violent crime, gun-related crime, go up dramatically, a 20-percent increase in gun-related deaths this year in Chicago over the previous year. In the city of Milwaukee, there is a 100-percent increase in gun-related crime this year.

So why would we even consider a bill that is before us on the floor of the Senate, offered by the Senator from Louisiana, to reduce funding for law enforcement and police departments? Senator Vitter has offered a bill that would block important police, disaster relief, and other funding from communities that do not share immigration information with the Federal Government or don't hold a detainee at the behest of Federal immigration authorities. My Republican colleagues know this bill has no chance to become law. They have made no effort to engage the Democrats in a bipartisan conversation. It may pass the Senate--but I doubt it--and if it does, the President would veto it. This is done for reasons other than passing a bill and creating a new law.

Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle claim they were responding to the tragic--and, yes, it was tragic--death of Kate Steinle, a young woman who was allegedly shot and killed by Francisco Sanchez, an undocumented immigrant with a long criminal history. Mr. Sanchez had several drug convictions. He illegally reentered the United States several times after he was deported. Earlier this year, he finished his third prison sentence for illegal reentry.

The Bureau of Prisons should have turned Mr. Sanchez over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department to be deported, but instead they sent him to San Francisco to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge. Not surprisingly, local authorities decided not to prosecute this old charge, so sadly, unfortunately, tragically he was released. This never ever should have happened. Federal and local authorities must do a better job of communicating and coordinating so undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records are detained and deported, period.

The bill before us doesn't solve the problem which I have just described. It wouldn't have prevented the tragic death of this young woman. In fact, this legislation would actually make us less safe by threatening communities with the loss of millions of dollars in critical Federal funding for local law enforcement, as well as discouraging immigrants from cooperating with local police.

The Chicago Tribune--not known as any liberal publication--published an editorial opposing the bill that is coming before us. They said: ``Threatening to take money away from local police is a sound bite, not a solution.''

Republican Congressman Bob Dold, from my home State of Illinois, was one of five Republicans who voted against the House version of the bill. He said: ``Cutting funding for local law enforcement would not have prevented this horrible crime.''

What would the consequences be of passing the Vitter bill that is pending before the Senate? At risk are tens of millions of dollars in funding from several programs. The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, also known as SCAAP, helps cover the costs for States and localities to detain undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records; the Community Oriented Policing Services Grant Program--which we all know about from serving in the Senate because our local police departments benefit from COPS funding; and the community development block grants provide critical funding for local communities for disaster relief and other priorities.

I wish to give some examples from Illinois of the impact of the Vitter bill. In fiscal year 2014, Cook County--our largest county--received $1,381,552 in SCAAP funding, and in fiscal year 2015, Chicago received $72,477,673 in CDBG funding, and $3,125,000 in funding through the COPS Hiring Program to address gun violence.

The Fraternal Order of Police sent a letter opposing the Vitter bill--which is before the Senate--on behalf of its 330,000 police members who belong to that fraternity. This is what it said: ``It is wrong and a gross unfairness to punish these brave men and women, or the citizens they serve, because Congress disagrees with their enforcement priorities with respect to our nation's immigration laws.''

This bill is supposedly an effort to punish so-called sanctuary cities--including some in my own home State--that have policies limiting dealings between Federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement, but the goal of these policies is to promote effective community policing by encouraging immigrant communities to trust local police. Many of these policies were established in response to Secure Communities, a program created by the Bush administration and a program which badly damaged the relationship between immigrant communities and local law enforcement around the country.

My State police signed a memorandum of agreement with immigration authorities to participate in Secure Communities. The agreement said the goal of the program was to ``identify, detain, and remove from the United States aliens who have been convicted of serious criminal offenses.''

However, it turned out more than 30 percent of those deported from Illinois in the program had no criminal record. Less than 20 percent had been convicted of a serious crime. Illinois law enforcement officials say the program eroded trust in law enforcement in the Hispanic community. Their conclusion is backed up by polling data. A 2013 University of Illinois study found that 44 percent of Latinos report being less likely to contact the police if they are a victim of crime out of fear that police will inquire about their immigration status or people they know.

The Vitter bill makes this problem even worse by forcing local law enforcement to become enforcers of immigration laws. I received a letter opposing the Vitter bill from the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force, a group of more than 30 law enforcement officials, including Republican Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran, a local law enforcement official from my home State whom I have worked with in the past. These officials are very concerned that this bill will make our communities less safe by discouraging immigrants from cooperating with law enforcement.

This is what the local law enforcement in Illinois said:

When state and local law enforcement agencies are required to enforce federal immigration laws, undocumented residents may fear that they, or people they know or depend upon, risk deportation by working with law enforcement. This fear undermines trust between law enforcement and the communities we serve, creating too much room for dangerous criminals and violent crime.

The Vitter bill also dramatically increases penalties for illegal entry, including two new mandatory minimum criminal sentences. Estimates are that these new penalties created by the Vitter bill would require approximately 18,600 new prison beds and up to 12 new Federal prisons. New Federal prisons cost several hundred million dollars to construct, tens of millions of dollars to operate. In sum, these new mandatory minimums will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. There is no suggestion in this bill of how we would pay for that.

The real solution to this problem is smart and targeted immigration enforcement that encourages cooperation with local law enforcement. The Homeland Security Department only has enough funding to deport a small fraction of the undocumented immigrants in our country. President Obama has wisely said we should focus on those who could do us harm. In fact, 85 percent of those deported from the interior of our country in fiscal year 2014 had a criminal conviction--and they should have been deported--compared to only 38 percent in 2008 under the previous President. This President's policies has focused our limited resources on deporting dangerous people, deporting felons, not families; criminals, not children.

As part of the effort to target immigration enforcement, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson has established the Priority Enforcement Program, also known as PEP, to replace security communities. PEP is designed to protect our safety while improving trust between local police and communities they serve. The program enables DHS to work with State and local law enforcement to take custody of individuals who pose a danger to public safety before they are released. PEP has only been operational for a short time. We need to give it a chance to work before we rush in to pass this legislation which could only make the problem worse.

The best way to fix our broken immigration system, incidentally, and make our communities safer is to pass comprehensive immigration reform once and for all. The bill the Senate passed in 2013 would have made unprecedented investments in border security, would have cracked down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants, and ramped up interior enforcement of immigration laws.

The bill would have invested $46 billion in new resources in border security, including no fewer than 38,405 U.S. Border Patrol agents along the southern border, enhanced penalties for increased immigration violations with sentences of up to 20 years for those with criminal histories, and increased penalties for passport and immigration document trafficking and fraud.

Most important, this bill would bring millions of people out of the shadows and require them to prove their identity, pass a criminal background check, and pay all fines and taxes. This would allow immigration enforcement to focus on the people who are truly a public safety threat.

So instead of this Senate taking up a bipartisan bill for true immigration reform, we have this bill, a bill not likely to go much further than this procedural motion which we will face tomorrow.

This bill on the floor would not have prevented Kate Steinle's tragic death. Here is the reality: The vast majority of immigrants are hard-working, law-abiding individuals with strong family values. I work with them, I know them, I trust them, and I believe they have an important role to play when it comes to this country's future.

Many studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes than native-born individuals. This bill unfortunately focuses on the violent acts of the few to scapegoat an entire community. This is dangerous and irresponsible. This bill continues down a dangerous path by promoting the myths that immigrants pose a threat to our Nation's safety.

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