NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGEMENT ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--Resumed

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, imagine going into a U.S. prison and announcing that a substantial number of the prisoners had to be released immediately--no exceptions, even if the prisoners in question had participated in serious crimes or committed violent offenses. That is an unthinkable scenario, and no one would seriously suggest going into our Nation's prisons and immediately releasing thousands of prisoners, including violent offenders onto the streets. Yet that is exactly what Democrats are proposing as part of a border security agreement.

Over the weekend, Democrats proposed capping the number of illegal immigrants who could be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Incredibly, they are refusing to allow an exception to the cap for violent criminals. Under Democrats' proposal, if Immigration and Customs Enforcement needed to detain more than 16,500 violent criminals in the interior of our country, they simply wouldn't be able to do it. Instead, immigration enforcement officers would have to choose which violent criminals to release back into our communities. Think about that.

Obviously, everyone who has come here illegally has broken our laws, but in a lot of cases in question, we are talking about people who have violated other laws, like laws against assault, rape, murder, theft, drug trafficking, and more. We are talking about limiting law enforcement's ability to make sure that those individuals are detained.

It isn't just about future detentions either. If the Democrats' enforcement cap went into effect, Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be forced to release criminals already in detention onto our Nation's streets.

Additionally, there are an estimated 180,000 criminal illegal aliens in the United States who currently are not in custody.

So, under the Democrats' proposal, not only would Immigration and Customs Enforcement be forced to release violent criminals, for all practical purposes, it would also be prohibited from trying to take additional dangerous criminals off of our streets.

Let's be very clear about what we are talking about here. We are talking about limiting the ability of a law enforcement agency to enforce criminal laws. No administration of either party would accept an arbitrary limit on the number of criminals it would be able to detain. No administration would or should sign off on a law that would force law enforcement agencies to leave violent criminals on our Nation's streets.

As of a couple of days ago, the Republicans, I would say, were encouraged by the bipartisan nature of the negotiations to prevent another government shutdown. Then the Democrats came forward with this absurd proposal to limit law enforcement's ability to detain even dangerous criminals.

Are Democrats trying to derail negotiations with a poison pill at the eleventh hour and force another shutdown? The question has to be asked since no one could seriously think that any President of either party would sign a deal that would limit his administration's ability to enforce the law.

We still have a few days left. I hope the Democrats will abandon this preposterous proposal to release dangerous criminals onto our Nation's streets. We can achieve a deal to avert another shutdown, but we can't do it by jeopardizing law enforcement's ability to protect the American people.
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Mr. THUNE. Madam President,

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Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Hoeven), and the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse).

Further, if present and voting the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``nay.''

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