No Bailout for Sanctuary Cities Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. 5717.
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, in just 3\1/2\ years, President Biden and his border czar, Kamala Harris, have allowed more than 7.6 million unvetted, illegal aliens into the United States. That is the equivalent of adding an entirely new State almost the size of Arizona, our 14th largest State, with nine congressional districts. Those not engaged in criminal activities are almost entirely destitute and are overwhelming public schools, hospitals, food banks, public housing, and social services.
This began the very first day of this administration, when Biden and Harris rescinded the remain in Mexico policy, ordered construction on the border wall halted, and literally instructed ICE to stop enforcing court-ordered deportations.
Today, ICE remains hog-tied in discharging its duty to remove even criminal illegal aliens from our midst. Before they can do so, they are now required to first develop a full profile of the criminal and to identify mitigating circumstances, such as if the criminal has high blood pressure or is a caregiver.
A former top ICE official told the Judiciary Committee that the Biden-Harris policies have made immigration enforcement more dangerous, more difficult to carry out, and less efficient overall. The flood of illegal mass migration at our southern border has thinned the ranks of ICE officers available to enforce laws within the interior because so many have been siphoned off to process illegals being allowed into our country.
When constituents ask me how this could be happening to their communities, I have to remind them that if they voted for Biden and Harris, this is exactly what they voted for, and if that surprises them, they weren't paying attention.
In 2019, Kamala Harris told the ACLU she would slash funding for immigration detention and close private immigration detention centers. As ABC News has been forced to confess, Harris did, in fact, endorse taxpayer funding to provide transgender surgeries for illegal aliens detained in the United States.
Americans are beginning to realize the severe danger to public safety posed by cities and States that refuse to notify ICE so that dangerous criminals can be turned over to them for deportation once they have served out their sentences, as the law requires. Instead, the woke left releases these criminals back onto our streets and into our communities to prey on new victims.
Instead of ICE being able to take these criminals into custody while they are disarmed and in custody, ICE agents, instead, must track them down and confront them when they are armed and at large. This is the very essence of the sanctuary policies that so many Democrats, including Biden and Harris, have supported and facilitated.
Although current law already prohibits jurisdictions from refusing to cooperate with Federal immigration officials, jurisdictions controlled by leftist officials continue to do so. This bill changes that.
The growing list of Americans victimized by criminal aliens released back onto our streets, in defiance of Federal law, is truly appalling.
According to ICE, Cook County, Illinois, saw law enforcement release 1,070 criminal aliens and immigration violators in fiscal year 2019 despite requests by ICE to notify the agency before they are released from local custody. One of those criminals was a Mexican national who had been arrested for theft. After his release from custody, that illegal alien lured a 3-year-old girl into a McDonald's bathroom and sexually assaulted her. Had Chicago authorities cooperated with Federal officials, that man, a convicted aggravated felon who previously had been deported, could have been in ICE custody and instead removed to Mexico.
In January 2023, a 27-year-old illegal alien from Mexico was allowed to remain in the United States through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program despite his arrest for domestic violence in New Jersey. Local law enforcement ignored an ICE detainer and released him, where he went on to murder his girlfriend and a married couple.
Without this legislation, we should brace ourselves for what is to come. In 2019, Kamala Harris committed to ending ICE detainers. H.R. 5717 would prevent any jurisdiction from ever doing so again.
Specifically, this bill renders sanctuary jurisdictions ineligible to receive certain taxpayer dollars that would bankroll illegal immigration in American communities. By denying certain Federal funding to jurisdictions that prohibit or restrict their cooperation with Federal immigration officials, the bill encourages sanctuary jurisdictions to end their anti-enforcement policies in favor of working with the Department of Homeland Security.
Today, Democrats will present far-fetched hypotheticals about how Republicans want to strip funding from program after program. On the contrary--to continue to receive these funds, the jurisdiction would simply need to follow existing law. Isn't that what a nation of laws is all about?
It is absurd that a bill like this is even necessary. As we have seen time and time again, far-left jurisdictions would prefer to release dangerous criminal aliens back onto American streets than to deport them once they have served their sentence, as Federal law requires. This bill helps end this dangerous and tragic absurdity.
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chair, I yield 8 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaLota), the author of this bill.
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chair, every grant the Federal Government makes to States and localities comes with conditions that they must fulfill in order to receive those funds. This measure simply says to get Federal funds, you must obey Federal law.
Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Molinaro).
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington), the chairman of the House Committee on the Budget.
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I am ready to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Last week, the House Judiciary Committee received chilling testimony from Sheriff Mike Boudreaux of the rural Central Valley county of Tulare, California. What he told us should be an earsplitting alarm for every town and every city in America.
In the sanctuary State of California, the criminal cartels have sunk deep roots throughout the State. In his county alone, a single assassin for the Sinaloa cartel admitted to over 25 murders. The sheriff said:
That he was responsible for a certain area of California and there were many other assassins assigned by cartels in California, throughout California, that were responsible for those areas.
Then he spoke to California's sanctuary State law. He told of a reign of terror committed by an illegal migrant over a 24-hour period in his county: a murder in Visalia, attempted murders an Exeter and Tulare, as well as shootings in Pixley, Sultana, and Visalia and an armed robbery in Exeter.
Here is the fine point of the matter: 2 days before this nightmare unfolded, this monster had been arrested, and ICE had requested a detainer so that they could deport him.
As Sheriff Boudreaux testified again:
Due to California's sanctuary State law, the Sheriff's Office was legally prohibited from recognizing or honoring the detainer of this would-be murderer and we were further prohibited from notifying ICE of his release from jail.
This is the dystopian world the Democrats have created in California with their sanctuary law which was supported at the time by then-State Attorney General Kamala Harris.
As Sheriff Boudreaux told us:
Much of what I speak of in regard to California and the violence, as well as the human trafficking, it is mirrored in other States all throughout the United States. The cartel wants to control these migrant towns and truly lead the same way that they are in other countries, specifically in Mexico.
He estimated that well over 50 percent of the crimes that he is dealing with in his county are now being committed by illegal immigrants, but since he can't report or confirm these numbers, the official number is zero.
I might add that the NYPD estimates that 75 percent of the crimes that they are now dealing with in Manhattan are committed by illegal migrants.
If it has not come to your neighborhood yet, Mr. Chairman, it soon will if we continue down the path that we are on.
Mr. Chairman, the American people have precious little time to awaken and stop this insanity before it engulfs their towns, neighborhoods, and communities if it hasn't already. In the meantime, measures like this will assure that policies like this never again are allowed to threaten our families.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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