Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2018
Floor Speech
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Mr. Chairman, the proposal to cut ICE funding for enforcement of immigration laws and removal of those here illegally will endanger the safety of the American people and convey to bad actors that the rule of law no longer exists in the United States, leading to increased border crossings and even more illegal aliens in the United States.
Cutting funding for beds will lead to the release of criminal and other removable aliens into communities across the country and weaken the United States border security. I ask you to join me in opposing this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, my good friend from Texas, I know his heart is in the right place, but I have real concerns about the cost and the utilization of body cameras. We know that you have to preserve evidence. And once you have opened this door that there are expected to be body cameras on officers, then not only do you have to preserve every piece of film or production that comes out of that camera as a potential piece of evidence, and if you take that and multiply it times the number of incidents that are going to occur as we go through a year, and then multiply that times however many years this agency lasts, you are talking about storing millions of gigs or whatever they are that have to be preserved to preserve potential evidence that could be used both by the defense and the prosecution.
And then in a case where there isn't a body camera, it is going to be a jury argument that can be very effectively made by the defense about why isn't there a body camera where there is a policy of having body cameras?
But the real issue that I have with this is the cost of preserving the record continuously by law enforcement. I think people haven't thought this out to what kind of additional cost this is going to be as you spread this out over the lifetime of an agency and all the agents that work for that agency.
I know the reasons why people think body cameras are a good idea, and they fit that. But does it justify the storage cost that is going to be required to preserve the evidence that is manufactured by the body camera?
That is the question I think we ought to consider, and that is the reason I oppose this amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, I understand what my colleague wants: the 45,000 agents that could potentially be acquiring these cameras. Because the first thing you are going to have the first time you go before a judge and you use one of these body cameras in one case, the defense is going to be wanting to know why you are not using them in every case. They are going to be setting up a defense of the fact that the officers failed to meet their duty to preserve the record.
So you take just 45,000 and 1 year of contacts. Granted, his $10 million isn't going to get all of those guys cameras, but you started down the road to putting a camera on 45,000 agents. And then you have to store everything they produce of any contact that they have for the potential use in evidence by one or the other side in a legal proceeding. That is what concerns me.
Joe Kelly is a good marine and a good Secretary, and I am sorry he is not with us anymore. But the reality is, if you sat in the courtroom and watched the preservation of evidence, you know this has the potential, both for law enforcement and for us, to be a mushroom that explodes in nuclear proportions. That is the only reason I raise this issue.
I know the issues that they are trying to address, and they need to be addressed. I am concerned about the fact that once you start down that road, you are constitutionally required to preserve evidence, and that will be costly. I will leave that up to our colleagues as to how they feel about that. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, I only want to lay out that there is a potential very large cost once this door is opened. That is my opposition to this. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chair, the proposal to cut ICE funding for enforcement of immigration laws and removal of those here illegally will not only endanger the safety of the American people, it will also convey to bad actors that the rule of law no longer exists in the United States, leading to increased border crossings and a growing overall illegal alien population.
Cutting funding for beds will lead to the release of criminal and other removable aliens into communities across the country and weaken the United States border security.
The hiring of additional ICE agents is needed to protect our communities by preventing terrorism and reducing crime through the vigorous enforcement of immigration and custom laws. Restricting this hiring compromises ICE's law enforcement mission, jeopardizing homeland security and public safety.
Interior immigration enforcement is indispensable to national security and public safety. It cannot be separated from border security. A successful border control and immigration system must be supported by the enforcement of all pertinent laws.
Adding funds to procure another polar icebreaker, while a noble idea, is simply not practical at this time. The Coast Guard is still in the early stages of design and will not be ready to procure the first icebreaker until late fiscal year 2019 at the earliest. The funds will be unexecutable and, therefore, a waste of limited resources that we have.
In addition, if you discuss with the border patrol about the biggest deterrent we have, it is the threat of detention. Mr. Chair, I ask that my colleagues join me in opposing this amendment. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, I, too, agree with Ms. Roybal- Allard for the need for an icebreaker, that is not in dispute here, but to cut the beds to the proposed 30,000 that she said, in 2017, our number was 39,000 and change, and we have been over that this year, so we still have a real need for these beds, and that need, as I have stated before, is why I oppose this amendment. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chair, I made the statement previously when we discussed this that this could quickly escalate. We are escalating again by 19,000 more people who would ultimately be required to have cameras.
Once again, without getting into what I just talked about, this is going to be a very costly item. We have something called chain of custody on evidence. ICE agents deal with some very serious issues, felony issues under Federal law. They have got a wide jurisdiction, one of the widest jurisdictions of any agency, even wider than some like the FBI.
So, once again, now that chain of custody on that camera, where that camera information passes from hand to hand, has to be kept in addition to the evidence so that if you are going to present it in court, you can prove the chain of custody. You just enhanced and expanded the amount of costs that it is going to take for an agent to go to trial.
I know this is a very popular idea all over the country, because it has been very much supported by the media, but I really, in good faith, believe that people have not considered the evidentiary problems they are going to create for themselves by the presence of these cameras.
We will find out fairly quickly as these cameras proliferate what the cost is going to be and what the information required is going to be by the courts. And maybe I am overanticipating, but just now, we have gone from $44,000; we have added another $19,000, just in our agency. Now, multiply that times every law enforcement entity in the United States and it becomes an astronomical expense and something we need to think about, and think about hard.
So, for those reasons, not because I don't think it is a good idea to have congeniality between arresting officer and defendant or being able to prove where there is abuse. I agree with all those things.
But I think you are creating a monster evidentiarywise as you go forward with body cameras. We tried them back in the seventies, and they very quickly found that they were not a good idea, but I guess we will try them again.
Anyway, for those reasons, I oppose the gentleman's amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Well, I certainly understand the example that the gentleman gave about officers planting dope, and it certainly did work. I can tell you, in my 20 years on the bench, we have had cameras on the dashboard of DPS troopers' cars for 10 years, 20 years maybe, I don't know, maybe the whole time I was there. But I have seen at least 15 of those prove the guilt of the defendant by his actions in front of those cameras. So it is not just to catch dirty cops; it also catches people in criminal action.
By the way, the action of that officer was a criminal action so, therefore, you have to preserve the evidence. My point is made by your very argument. You have to preserve the evidence. If you lose the evidence, you are going to lose the prosecution, and so you are going to have to keep it secure. If it passes from one hand to the other hand, it has to be tracked in a chain of custody.
If it is secure on the--there is going to have to be some evidence of the security of whatever web or whatever it is that it is on, or the cloud, that that is a secure cloud so that someone can't have messed with the evidence while it is on the cloud. All of that is potential argument against conviction in a criminal case, and those ICE agents deal with serious criminal cases.
I don't think people have thought it out. If they have, then that is fine. Let's spend that money. But it is going to be astronomical if we do it for every law enforcement agent in the country. I continue my opposition, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chair, once again, as I said before of the gentlewoman's amendment cutting beds, that that will weaken the United States' border security, and the hiring of additional ICE agents is needed to protect our communities, prevent terrorism, reduce crime through vigorous enforcement of immigration and customs laws.
Successful border control and immigration systems must be supported by enforcement of pertinent laws. This bill recommends $240 million for four fast-response cutters, the same as the amount requested. The program is on schedule and on budget, and there is no need to accelerate the procurement of additional ships. We have been building those on time without flaws now for 4 years at that same rate. We are building a lot of fast-response cutters very quickly.
We have, now, a new program for the offshore patrol cutter, which the first of the contracts have been let, and that is in the process of being built, and we have a projection for multiple of those cutters.
Taking away from our ability to detain people who have broken the law is not a good resource for growing a program that is already very robust and very effective and has put online multiple fast-response cutters.
Mr. Chair, for those reasons, I oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chair, even if this money should be moved and the gentleman's amendment be approved, it wouldn't mean that any more fast-response cutters would be built in this calendar year.
I am fairly certain that the commandant of the Coast Guard would say that we have been very robust and very effective at producing fast- response cutters, and I believe that the detention beds is a deterrent for those coming across the border and for those violating the law as an important part of the defense of the borders and the people of the United States.
Therefore, I continue to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. Chairman, I have some concerns regarding this amendment. However, I agree there is a gap in our Nation's icebreaking capability, and I strongly support the Coast Guard's icebreaking program. For that reason, I will not oppose this amendment.
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Mr. Chair, estimating the required number of operations and detention beds is not exact science. This reprogramming a party is essential to be able to deal with emergent and critical operation needs, like surges we have seen in 2014 and 2016.
Without sufficient funding for beds, ICE will be forced to release criminal and other illegal aliens into communities across the country and weaken the security of the United States. The proposal to restrict ICE's ability to reprogram funding for detention beds would not only endanger the safety of the American people, but it will also convey to bad actors that the United States will not detain illegal aliens, leading to increased border crossings and growing overall illegal alien operations in the United States.
Therefore, I oppose this amendment and ask my colleagues to do the same. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
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