Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. COSTA. Mr. Chairman, the description of the amendment, as we understand it, prohibits the use of these funds that contravene section 642 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

The facts are that the States and localities around the country that have adopted laws and policies to limit immigration enforcement by law enforcement are focused on protecting public safety. We have this in California. We have it in many border States. There is a level of cooperation that does take place between local law enforcement agencies as well as our Federal enforcement officers.

Surely, we don't believe it is good public policy to force an unwanted role upon police through the threat of sanctions, which is what this amendment does, or withholding police funding. Frankly, if you believe in Federalism and if you believe in that relationship between local, State, and Federal Government, this is really top-down and I think runs contrary to the notion that law enforcement agencies at all levels collaborate and cooperate.

Holding this sort of a sword of Damocles, so to speak, over the head of local law enforcement agencies simply, I think, is not good public policy.

In an op-ed piece that was published in Roll Call last year, the police chief of Dayton, Ohio, explained why his department instructs its officers not to check the immigration status of witnesses and victims or to question their status in minor traffic stops.

He says:

These policies allow us to focus our limited resources on our primary mission, which is crime solving and community safety.

We know that local law enforcement agencies are clearly stretched very thin across the country. They also said victims of crimes should never be afraid to reach out for help due to the fear of immigration consequences because, notwithstanding the fact of their status, crimes are perpetrated upon these people as well.

Since Dayton adopted these policies and innovative ways of addressing crime problems, their crime rates have significantly declined; and, in the past 3 years, serious crime has declined nearly 22 percent, while serious property crime has gone down 15 percent. It is simply, we believe, perverse to punish communities that want to prioritize because they know best what their challenges are within their communities to protect the public against crime and to enact community-based policing activities. To deny them this funding through this threat of the SCAAP funds simply is, we believe, inappropriate.

Finally, I think that this amendment focuses on a problem that doesn't exist.

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Mr. COSTA. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the gentlemen from California and from Pennsylvania for allowing me this time, and the gentleman from California for offering this important amendment.

Let me give a little perspective here. Clearly, everyone is aware of the disastrous drought that is having catastrophic impacts in California, not only in the San Joaquin Valley but throughout the State. There are a number of factors that have caused the challenges that we face with a lack of water in California. Obviously, it hasn't rained very much or snowed very much in the mountains for 4 years.

In addition to that, we have a broken water system in the sense that, designed in the fifties and the sixties, both the Federal and State water projects, for a State of 20 million people, today we have 38 million people, and we have a lot of demands not only for the use of agriculture, but for people in our cities and for the environment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment relates to our requirements under the law to protect the environment, those endangered species, salmonoid and steelhead that are native to California.

What happened is some 100 years ago, before we had a better understanding and before California was a much bigger State, there was the introduction of striped bass from the East Coast, bound from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence Seaway all the way down to Alabama. These are native fish on the East Coast, but they were not native to California. They were introduced in a small number but became very successful in propagation, so much so that in the early 1900s, after 10 years of introduction, over 1 million pounds a year was being harvested of these nonnative striped bass fish in the San Francisco Bay-San Joaquin-Sacramento-Delta River systems.

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Mr. COSTA. As I was saying, Mr. Chairman, the fact is that the State has changed a great deal to present day. The current water system is unable to meet the demands under the current restrictions that are required under the Endangered Species Act to maintain and to try to increase the population of salmonoid and steelhead.

We have determined, as my colleague and friend from California stated, that these fish, these predator fish, are responsible for a large amount of the takings of both the native California salmon and steelhead, and yet we have no program to balance this.

What this amendment would do is it simply requires that for a recovery plan to be effective, it must incorporate and address all factors involved in species recovery, those of particularly high concern.

Some of the studies have indicated on the Sacramento River over 95 percent of the juvenile salmon and steelhead are eaten by these predator striped bass, these nonnative fish and other invasive species. This amendment ensures that the recovery plan for endangered salmon and steelhead takes these factors into account, including the predation by the nonnative species such as striped bass.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment of the gentleman from California.

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