Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 25, 2007)
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Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend for yielding, and I thank both the chairman and ranking member of my committee.
I bring to this discussion and this bipartisan support, I hope, the perspective of having been in the trenches and having dealt with this issue.
I can't count on all the digits that I have the number of times that I have sat in a meeting of the Williamson County law enforcement group about the overcrowdedness of our jail in Williamson County, Texas, now a county of about 350,000 people.
We always look to see how many Federal prisoners we had in our jail, and always we would see 22 to 30 percent of these people would be what we considered Federal prisoners, illegal aliens, that had committed crimes. Now, yes, this is an immigration issue. Yes, it is a border protection issue. And these are issues that we all agree we must address. We will, I am confident, address them. But it is also a law enforcement issue. It is an issue that our people who enforce our laws at the local level and do the right thing, take them to court, try them, convict them, hold them while they are ready for trial, have space taken up by a responsibility of our Federal Government. And what we are doing here today is providing resources for those local people so that they can do their job and enforce the laws of the United States and of our various States.
This is a good use of our money to assist our locals, counties, States, and other authorities that have this duty of enforcing our laws in America, to help them do their job so we are not burdening the taxpayer at the local level and shifting funds from good things that keep our communities safe in order to keep these people in jail. And, believe me, they will do what it takes to keep them in jail.
So, therefore, let's do our job. Let's pass this additional funds for helping those who would incarcerate criminals on our behalf, and by that, I think we will be doing a good thing for our country.
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