Improving America's Security Act--Continued
IMPROVING AMERICA'S SECURITY ACT--Continued -- (Senate - March 07, 2007)
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. ALLARD. I will be glad to yield.
Mr. CORNYN. Would the Senator from Colorado tell us what portion of the population is sort of disproportionately affected by this identity theft, particularly when it involves Social Security numbers?
Mr. ALLARD. A large portion of the population that is affected by the Social Security theft identification is the older population, those individuals on Social Security. The impact it is going to have on them is immediate in some cases because they are qualifying for a certain amount of Social Security based on the income that may be coming. If somebody else is using their Social Security number, that exceeds, perhaps, what allowances they may have to qualify for the Social Security benefits. If an individual has a job, then the effect is felt much later on.
The retired individuals of this country are most dramatically affected in this regard.
Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from Colorado whether he is aware that the Federal Trade Commission has identified the top 10 States where identity theft is the biggest problem and that they have ranked Arizona as No. 1; and Nevada, the State represented by the majority leader; California; and Texas, No.4; and then Colorado at No. 5.
Is the Senator aware that the Federal Trade Commission has ranked those States as the top five States where identity theft is the biggest problem.
Mr. ALLARD. I thank the Senator from Texas for his question, and, yes, I am very much aware of that. Those States are disproportionately affected because of the overpopulation they have within their boundaries.
Mr. CORNYN. Is the Senator from Colorado aware there are those who will purchase bogus documents on the black market--basically for purposes of evading and breaking our immigration laws so they can purport to be someone whom they are not--and whether this, in his opinion, represents a security risk to the United States.
Mr. ALLARD. That is one of the problems we are facing today and one of the problems that Secretary Chertoff of Homeland Security pointed out. It is vital that we be able to identify duplicate uses of Social Security numbers because a number of the terrorists that were here on 9/11, attacking this country, were here under fraudulent IDs. It is an important aspect of law enforcement, and particularly homeland security, to be able to carry on their responsibilities.
Mr. CORNYN. Finally, Mr. President, I would like to ask the Senator whether this isn't exactly the kind of stovepipe or wall that the 9/11 Commission talked about when it comes to information sharing between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Isn't this exactly the same kind of information sharing they found so important to protecting the security of our Nation?
Mr. ALLARD. Well, it is the very thing the 9/11 Commission was pointing out that is a problem with protecting the citizens of this country, the stovepiping of information among the various agencies and where there is no passing of information back and forth.
This is a classic example where one agency, in this case the Social Security Administration, has a number, and they know it is being used more than once throughout the country, yet nobody gets notified; it stays within the Social Security Administration. Even those law enforcement agencies within Homeland Security cannot get that information to act on it.
Secretary Chertoff said an important part of being able to carry out our function to ensure the security of this country is to get that information. Yet right now, the law explicitly prohibits the Social Security Administration from sharing that information with Homeland Security.
I think it is a problem that needs to be corrected, and the sooner we can correct that, the better.
Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Senator, and I support his amendment.
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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Maine, the distinguished ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In response, I would point out that these amendments, which are now consolidated in this modification, actually have been pending now for some time but we have been unsuccessful in persuading the majority to give us an opportunity for an up-or-down vote on them.
The bill we are debating is entitled ``A Bill to Make the United States More Secure By Implementing Unfinished Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to Fight the War on Terror More Effectively, to Improve Homeland Security, and for other purposes.' I can't think of any amendment that would be more appropriate to accomplishing the stated goal of this particular legislation than the one I have pending now.
The distinguished Republican leader has summarized, I think very well, what is contained in this modification. But just so none of my colleagues are confused, these are not new matters. This modification simply represents a consolidation of several amendments that are pending on the floor and have been pending for some time, but which have been refused an opportunity to have a full and fair debate followed by an up-or-down vote by the majority.
We all know it has been more than 5 years since September 11. And, there remains some unfinished business that needs to be addressed by this legislation, and my amendment will do just that.
One of the things left to do is to target terrorist recruiting. The FBI and other agencies have made it clear that al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations are intent on attacking our country again and are busy recruiting those who wish to join them. We know al-Qaida is a patient enemy, waiting years to attack--sometimes embedding into society and appearing to be a part of the regular population until, but at a time of their choosing, rising out of their sleeper cells to attack innocent civilians to accomplish their goals.
According to congressional testimony, terrorists and terrorist sympathizers are actively in the process of recruiting terrorists within the United States. So we are not just talking about a wholly foreign enemy that would attack us from abroad; we are talking about people being recruited to carry out terrorist attacks here in the United States. Of course their goal is to find individuals who do not fit the traditional terrorist model, who can operate freely in our country, and who are willing to engage in these heinous acts. Recruiting these type of individuals, those who blend easily into our society, provides al-Qaida an operational advantage.
This is not an academic discussion. Let me just use one example to demonstrate this reality. Intelligence materials related to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of the 9/11 plot, show that he was running terrorist cells within the United States. These documents show that al-Qaida's goal was to recruit U.S. citizens and other westerners so they could move freely within our country, so they would be unlikely to be identified and stopped at our border's edge or in our airports or land-based ports before they carry out their attacks. These terrorist recruiters have targeted mosques, prisons, and universities throughout the United States where they could identify and recruit people who might be sympathetic to their jihadist message and then persuade these individuals to join their organization.
Unbelievably, we currently have no statute in place that is designed to punish those who recruit people to commit terrorist acts. This amendment includes a provision that would remedy this serious gap in our law. It simply provides that it is against the law to recruit or, in the words of the amendment, ``to employ, solicit, induce, command or cause' any person to commit an act of domestic terrorism, international terrorism, or a Federal crime of terrorism, and any person convicted of this would face serious punishment.
This amendment also provides that anyone committing this crime should be punished for up to 10 years in the Federal penitentiary. If a death results in connection with this crime, he or she can be punished by death or a term of years or for life; if serious bodily injury to any individual results, then a punishment of no less than 10 years or more than 25 years is available to the judge.
This is a commonsense measure, designed to fill a serious gap in our Criminal Code that, frankly, should not continue to exist more than 5 years after September 11. This fits exactly with the stated purpose of this legislation, and I hope our colleagues will vote in favor of this amendment.
Two other provisions in this amendment that again represent amendments that have been previously filed and are pending but which I have now included in this consolidated amendment. One includes a remedy to a problem created by a Supreme Court decision in 2001, the Zadvydas case, which held that dangerous criminal aliens must be released after an expiration of 6 months if there is no likelihood that their home country would take them back in the near future, even if their home country will not take them. This means that they have to be released into the general population of the United States, free to re-commit serious crimes.
In other words, what the Supreme Court said is that Congress had not specifically authorized the Department of Homeland Security to hold dangerous criminal aliens whose home country will not take them back for longer than 6 months pending their deportation or repatriation to their home country. This amendment remedies that decision. In fact, the Supreme Court invited the Congress to revisit this decision, since it is purely a statutory holding.
Specifically, this amendment would allow DHS to protect the American people from dangerous criminal aliens until their removal proceedings are completed. It allows the Department of Homeland Security to detain criminal aliens after a final order of removal and beyond the 90-day removal period if removal is likely to occur in the foreseeable future or for national security and public safety grounds. It preserves the right of the alien to seek review of continued detention through habeas proceedings after exhaustion of administrative remedies. And to be clear, my amendment does preserve the right of the affected alien to seek administrative and judicial review of these decisions. But, the amendment makes clear that it is intended to fill an important gap by authorizing DHS to protect the American people from the willy-nilly release of dangerous criminal aliens after 6 months. This situation has occurred and will continue to occur and it is important for Congress to step up and to fix this problem created by the interpretation of this statute in 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The last element of this consolidated amendment that I want to mention has to do with material support for suicide bombers and other terrorists. We hear too often the difficulty in identifying and stopping suicide bombers before they can carry out their deadly attacks. One incentive to those who decide to carry out these attacks is financial rewards promised to the families of suicide bombers who are assured that their families will be paid and cared for after they commit their heinous acts. This provision would ban the payment of financial rewards or other material support to the families of suicide bombers such as Assad, a known terrorist who has enticed people to engage in these attacks, with a promise to pay their families up to $25,000, if my memory serves me correctly, as a reward. This provision would ban the payment of these types of financial rewards and dry up a real incentive used to induce or facilitate carrying out of a terrorist attack and send to prison those who do so.
I would add that this amendment also increases the punishments for those convicted of providing material support. The Department of Justice has told us that the material support statute is one of the most important anti-terror tools in their tool box, and it is only right and appropriate that we use this opportunity to strengthen the 9/11 bill with this important improvement to such an effective statute.
In conclusion, this amendment provides real anti-terror and anti-crime tools to the 9/11 bill and will ensure, as the preface of this bill states, that it will finish the unfinished business of the 9/11 Commission and of the Nation, making us more secure, 5 years-plus since the dastardly attacks of 9/11.
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