The Role of State and Local Law Enforcement in Immigration

Panel Discussion Transcript

June 26, 2003
Rayburn House Office Building, Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C.

Moderator:
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies

Panelists:
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA)

James R. Edwards, Jr., author of a new Center for Immigration Studies Backgrounder, "Officers Need Backup: The Role of State and Local Police in Immigration Law Enforcement"

Haran Lowe, Assistant Attorney General, Alabama Department of Public Safety

MARK KRIKORIAN: I’m Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies. We’re a think tank here in town that examines and critiques the impact of immigration in the United States. Our work is on the Web at cis.org for anybody who wants to know more. We are hosting this timely panel for a couple of reasons. We have published a paper on the subject of state and local law enforcement cooperation with the immigration authorities, and also this is an issue that’s politically become important and, as we can tell from two of our congressional guests, one that’s likely to see legislation that’s gained saliency and importance since 9/11, with the increased concern and awareness of the importance of immigration enforcement.

Nobody came to hear me talk, so let me introduce the speakers and then we’ll start. Our first speaker is going to be Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican from Alabama, and following him will be Congressman Charlie Norwood, Republican from Georgia, and they’ll probably – they need to go off to do the people’s business so we’ll excuse them after their comments. Gentlemen, thank you very much.

And then following them will be Jim Edwards, who is the author of a paper that should be in the packets you got on this issue of state and local cooperation with immigration authorities. Jim is uniquely well placed to talk about this. He’s a former Judiciary Committee – or former staffer for Congressman Bryant, who dealt with judiciary issues, and is co-author of a book called “The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform.”

Following him will be Haran Lowe, who is assistant attorney general for Alabama, the Department of Public Safety in the state of Alabama, and liaison for the department with the Homeland Security Department, and has worked on that state’s program of training some of its law enforcement people to do – you know, on immigration law and to work in immigration enforcement.

So without hearing any more from me, let’s start with Senator Sessions. Senator?

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R-AL): Thank you. Does that work? I might just stand up. I might think better on my feet, I’m not sure.

I have served in federal law enforcement for a number of years, really 15, as an assistant United States Attorney and then United States Attorney for 12 years, and have had some passing experience with immigration laws. I was attorney general of Alabama for two years before being elected to the Senate. I knew police officers all over the state. As I traveled the state and met police chiefs and sheriffs and talked about issues, they raised issues dealing with problems with immigration. I began to question them in some detail and what I learned was pretty shocking. Basically, we are not allowing state and local law enforcement to be participants in any meaningful way in the enforcement of federal laws dealing with immigration. They have been shut out of it. There are 2,000, I understand, INS agents in the heartlands of America. There are 600,000 state and local officers who are on our streets every day, enforcing all the laws that apply in America, except, it appears, immigration laws. They basically have been told to stay out.

Recently I had a conference, as I frequently do, and invited a group of chiefs of police around, and this subject came up and I asked them what happens when they apprehend a group of people they identify to be – when a local police officer or sheriff’s deputy or state trooper apprehends someone they quickly determine, for whatever reason they know, that they’re illegal. Well, what they do is turn them loose. They don’t even bother to call INS in most cases. And in fact, in Alabama the chief told me the INS people told them not to call, unless they release 15 that they’d apprehended; they might be able to send somebody.

I’ve checked the situation in Alabama — with almost five million people — has one INS officer for the entire state. Now, that may be an aberration, other states may have some more, but when you see the numbers there, there are very few INS officers – the INS officers that are out there, there’s no way they can do the job. The only way we can enforce immigration laws in America, if we desire to do so, is to engage and employ and utilize our state and local law officers. That’s so basic as to be without dispute, it seems to me. Now, the attorney general and the President and Secretary Ridge and others have emphasized in the war on terror we have got to employ and coordinate with and utilize the tremendous resources of state and local law enforcement. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.

So what is the situation we have today? Fundamentally these officers are shut out. You know, I’ve returned indictments against county commissioners, judges, bank presidents, mayors, chiefs of police. A police officer can go out and arrest one of those anytime a warrant’s out there, just like that, but they’re told they cannot arrest someone who’s not a citizen? This really is a weird deal. It does not make sense to me, and it’s fundamentally wrong.

So I would say we’ve created the appearance of having an effective legal system, and people will ask about it and say, well, you’ve got a law that does this, you’ve got a law that does that, you’ve got a law that does this, but are they being enforced? Are they capable of being enforced under the current circumstances of today? And I say not, and it’s really made a mockery of law.

I cannot tell you how deeply I believe that America’s strength is based on our commitment to law. In the Supreme Court, chiseled on the wall over there are the words, “equal justice under law.” The fact that we enforce laws effectively in America is our strength. A corporation and a – well, an individual can sign a 30-year mortgage at 6 percent interest and people expect it to be enforced. Most countries wouldn’t think that that’s possible in their country. So this is important to us. And to me, to have a major part of our legal system just be eviscerated by a systematic approach to things that guarantees it won’t work, guarantees that those who violate the law can continue to violate the law, is just not good for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is a lot of the terrorism that we – threats that we have to this country today involve people who are here illegally, and it’s important for us to know who’s here and who’s not here, to allow those people to come – and I support immigration; I support people coming to visit and staying and going to college and educating themselves. All those things I support, but I really believe we need to have a system that is enforceable and is enforced.

Now, Alabama has – this is a couple of things we’ve learned. Florida has taken the lead and stepped up their effort, and they have gone through a training program with INS so their officers can participate to some degree, and they found that there is a secret database. I’m kind of kidding, but what used to be INS I guess is ICE today, I-C-E. That group has a database that puts in it illegals who have skipped bail, who have not come to court, who have been convicted of crimes and absconded, who are convicted of unrelated crimes to immigration and been ordered deported. They have it in there but it does not go into the NCIC, National Crime Information Center, which is what police officers access. If they stop you on the street they’ll run your name in NCIC and they’ll have a warrant out for you, American citizen, bank president, member of Congress; they’ll put you in the slammer, but the systems they are accessing do not have people who are here illegally, who’ve committed crimes, who have court orders against them.

That really makes no sense to me, so we’ve set up this system – and I think it will have the potential to be effective – that we can access this separate system that most law officers in America don’t even know exists and certainly don’t know how to exercise it when they are out on the road and they make a stop. And I think that will be a big help for us, and we’ll have a good report on that, how that can work. But I would say, to me it should be in NCIC. All those warrants for serious offenses ought to be in this system that’s routinely accessed, because most people – most officers are going to hesitate to run two systems now when they are out on the highway trying to make a stop.

I do salute Judge Al Gonzales in the White House. He’s written an opinion that says there is an inherent right of state and local law enforcement to arrest for felony offenses. That’s the clear statement that we’ve needed for some time. It’s difficult, though, for a lot of times to know who’s committed these crimes if your computer system, the data system, doesn’t provide the information to the local law enforcement officer. So I think that’s a big step. It does not apparently – we have not yet answered the question about civil violations of immigration law but I think there’s authority there, but there are memorandums and opinions that say to the contrary, so that remains unclear. So I think perhaps legislation is something we’re going to need to consider to improve this. We don’t need to exclude people that we’ve not intended to exclude. We don’t need, in most cases, tougher immigration laws as much as we need to enforce the ones we have. And you have to have a system that actually works, and this one is not working today.

Your report, Jim, is just so consistent with what I’ve learned anecdotally, working in the state and talking to local law enforcement, and I think you’re right on, fundamentally, there with the problems. I’ve been able to skim it and look over it briefly. It seems to me to touch on the basic problems, so I salute you for doing that. The role of state and local police in immigration law enforcement is a matter of tremendous importance. We’ve got to keep working on it.

You know, if you raise these questions some people automatically think that you’re hostile to immigrants or you don’t like people to come here; you don’t want them to succeed; we’re trying to be Big Brother. That’s not it. We believe in the rule of law. We believe that people can come here and be citizens of this country and reach their fullest and highest potential, but we believe that any nation has the right to set the standards by which it accepts people, and then if it sets those standards it ought to create a legal system that would enforce those standards. Otherwise it undermines respect for law and undermines the whole scheme of immigration that we’ve worked to create.

Thank you for what you’ve done. I do hate to go. I understand our vote started at 9:15, so I should just make it if I leave now. If there’s any quick question or comment that anybody here would want to make before I leave –

JAMES R. EDWARDS: Thank you very much, Senator.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Senator. I appreciate your time.

SEN. SESSIONS: Thank you for what you’re doing, and Charlie Norwood is very, very interested in this issue. He’s worked very hard on it and I’m impressed, Charlie, with what you’ve done and –

REP. CHARLES NORWOOD (R-GA): Along with what you say, we’ll have to have a legislative solution. Somebody’s got to come up with a legislative solution.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Yes?

Q: A very quick question, sir. My name is Maria Gonzales. I’m a newspaper correspondent. I wonder if you have any legislation or if you’re planning to introduce anything regarding this.

SEN. SESSIONS: I’m looking at that, and I think we probably do need legislation. My basic thoughts, having been involved in the legal system for a long time, is that it probably will take a combination of things: regulations within the existing agencies, assignment of personnel within the existing agencies, policies, training of state and local law enforcement. Most of that really does not require legislation, but if they’re not going to do it we may need to insist that it get done. Then we may need some legislative changes. Frankly, I don’t think there’s any law that prohibits NCIC from being a repository for immigration crimes – you know, actual violations of immigration law. But some policy somewhere has been not to have that accessible to the local law enforcement.

So there are a lot of things that can be done, like Judge Gonzales’ letter. That opened up some things that some people thought you couldn’t do. I think most people who study it would have agreed with him, but some out there – people felt like they were told they couldn’t be involved in making those kind of arrests at all, and he certainly has cleared that up. So there are a lot of things we can do, and I think we’re going to need some legislation also.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Senator. I appreciate your time, thanks.

Congressman Norwood has actually given a good deal of thought to a legislative approach to this issue, and I’ll pass it over to him. Congressman?

REP. NORWOOD: Well, thank you and good morning to you all. I’m very pleased to be here to discuss this subject, though I’m not familiar much with law enforcement. I’m not an attorney; I’ve certainly never been a sheriff; but I am concerned about what I see happening in America. I know this is an immigration panel, but that’s probably not exactly the subject that I’m most interested in. The subject is homeland security.

I believe very strongly that immigrants have been – and in the last 20 years have been a wonderful thing for this country, but I wonder how many of you would agree with me if I were to drop a bill in the House saying, let’s eliminate all immigration laws; let’s just simply open the borders, anybody who wants to come, come on, no problem. I wonder how many members of the House of Representatives would vote for that bill. I wonder if any of you would agree with that bill, that we just simply say, look, we’re wasting a lot of money on this; we like immigrants, we like people to come to America, quite hassling people, open the borders. I don’t really think it would even get my vote, much less anybody else’s vote. But in effect, that’s what we’ve done. Our illegal immigration laws are in shambles. We simply say to the world, look, don’t cross our borders against federal law; you’re breaking the law if you do. But if you get by, don’t worry about it; nobody is going to pay any attention to it.

Now, what message does that send? How does that help us have a controlled immigration policy? Well, of course it doesn’t. I don’t blame people for wanting to come to America. It is a better life. It is a way to make a living. If I were from Mexico City I would be trying to cross that border to get into this country, and I would do it – I’d try to do it legally, but that’s in shambles. It takes forever. Legal immigration is undermanned, underfunded, and basically doesn’t work. I know that because I’ve tried for the last nine years to help people come into this country.

So this isn’t a discussion about whether we want people here or not. It is a discussion about how many of those people who are here illegally – and I hear all kind of numbers and you do too, and maybe nobody knows. You know, it’s eight million one day, it’s 10 million the next, it’s 13 million the next. I don’t know; it’s between eight and 13 million, somewhere in there. A question that has to be asked, and legitimately asked, and the people in my district want asked: how many of those are terrorists? How many of those have to be terrorists before we get to another 9/11? Is it one out of a thousand, one out of a hundred thousand? How many?

They’re here, you know. They’re here in Washington, they’re here in Augusta, Georgia, they’re wandering the streets. It may not be but 500; I don’t know. But they’re here. Who’s paying any attention to that? Homeland Security says, oh, we’re going to do something about that. What? When the City of Los Angeles says, whatever you do, patrolmen on the beat, don’t call the INS; don’t talk to anybody that is here illegally. Ignore it. When the City of New York does the same thing, when the City of Houston does the same thing . . . what’s going on? When we have a vote two nights ago to penalize cities that will not talk to – now ICE, who will not talk to the federal government about enforcing the federal law, and we get a hundred votes to penalize those cities because they’re breaking federal law? What in the world is going on in this country?

If we’re going to have legal immigration – which we should have – it has to be controlled. You have to know who it is, you have to know where they are, you have to know if any of them are terrorists so they can’t come in legally – and they have, you know, through the visa process. We have to deal with these things if you want to be safe.

What’s going on in America today? This is beyond my comprehension that the House of Representatives can only have a hundred votes to say to the City of Los Angeles that if you don’t enforce federal law, as you’re supposed to enforce federal law, we’re not going to send you more money so you can not enforce federal law. And a hundred members of the House agree to that? That is a serious, serious problem. Let’s say there are 10 million illegal immigrants. I bet I even know some of them. I don’t know that they’re illegal but I bet I know some of them. They are some in my district, no question about it. Out of that 10 million, how many do we need to worry about?

Well, we think we know there are 300,000 out there out of that eight or 13 million illegal immigrants that right now they’re standing deportation orders on. Who’s supposed to deal with that, the 2,000 INS agents? That’s a perfect joke. That means we don’t mean it. That means we have a law that we don’t mean, to have 2,000 enforcement agents – not doable. Three hundred thousand with standing deportation orders? You know that 80 (thousand) of those 300,000 are violent criminals? One of them is from Alma, Georgia – pedophile, let loose. Why? What’s the sheriff supposed to do about it? You call the feds and say, please enforce the law, and they say, you kidding me; I haven’t got time to mess with you. That’s what the feds say.

Out of that 300,000 there are 15,000 that we know we have a national security interest in. What does that mean? Does that mean of those 15,000, half are terrorists? Does that mean the Department of Justice doesn’t really know exactly what’s wrong? How many are? We don’t know, and we don’t have anybody to find out, and the House of Representatives says, okay, so what? And then they go home and they tell everybody not to worry; we’re going to protect you from the terrorists. Number-one job of the federal government: we’re going to protect you and your homeland – but we don’t know who those 15,000 are, and nobody cares.

We know out of that 15,000 – we actually know this much – about 4,000 of them are connected to al Qaeda. Well, maybe they aren’t all terrorists. Where are they? Who are they? Do they live here? Maybe all 3,800 are in Washington, D.C. Who knows? Who cares? Just ignore the law. And that way is the same thing as passing a law that does away with all of our immigration laws. That’s basically what we’ve done. Have you ever tried to help somebody get into this country legally? It is a perfect nightmare. No wonder people who want to come to America legally give up and sneak across the border at night, where we have absolutely no control over who it is. Our immigration laws don’t work, and we make sure of it. Something has got to be done. Otherwise we need to be very honest with ourselves and say, America is an open border; ya’ll come – ya’ll in Augusta, you all. (Scattered laughter.) All of you; everybody just come on in, but be nice when you get here, will ya? And if you happen to be a pedophile, well, what the hell, we got pedophiles around. If you happen to have shot a police officer, not to worry.

Something’s got to be done, and I don’t know where else to do it but to change policy of the United States government, and when we get into the question and answer period, any of you who want to do away totally with all immigration laws, I want you to stand up and tell me that. And if you think we haven’t already done that, I want you to get up and explain that to me.

The Senator talked about local law enforcement. Of course you have to involve local law enforcement. There are 700,000 damned good troopers out there. I talked to one last night from Georgia. I asked him, I said, “You know, when you’re running the roads and you get a speeder and you find out that speeder is an illegal alien and just happened to have an AK-47 in the trunk, what do you do about it?” He said, “I can’t in good conscience turn them loose. I make the sheriff turn them loose. I turn them over to the sheriff and the sheriff turns them loose because he calls the INS and they say, ‘sorry, we’re too busy.’” And they’re right; they are. They’re underfunded, they’re undermanned, they’ve got 2,000 officers out there that deal with enforcement. Of course they can’t run down to Alma, Georgia, to pick up three people to take them back to Atlanta to the INS office to deport them.

The system we have is no system. It just simply doesn’t work. Thoughtful people are going to have to come up with some serious legislation to deal with this. I’m not smart enough to know how you deal with this without involving the 700,000 deputies and chiefs of police and state patrols. I don’t know how else to do it other than involve those 700 people. And if you don’t want us to do this, be man or woman enough to stand up and say, I don’t really care how many of those 3,800 that slipped across the border that are connected to al Qaeda that’s going to blow up the Capital. Say it, because that’s what you mean. Somewhere, sometime I fear we’re going to have another 9/11, and it’s going to be directly connected, I’ll bet you anything, with somebody who slipped across the border just like it was at 9/11. Some of them tricked us and came legally; some of them didn’t. Some of them were even apprehended two or three days before 9/11. What did we do? We turned them loose.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you very much. Now Jim Edwards will talk about the paper that you all have in your packet that deals with a lot of the issues the congressman touched on generally.

MR. EDWARDS: Well, thank you, Mark, and thank you for being here this morning, all of you, this early hour. Thank you to the center for hosting this forum and for publishing my paper. Also, a special thanks to Mark for convening a panel on which he’s the only one with an accent. (Laughter.) And I very much appreciate –

REP. NORWOOD: Wait a minute, Mark, I think I can talk as good as you can. (Laughter.)

MR. KRIKORIAN: No, I’m the only one with the accent.

REP. NORWOOD: Oh, you are.

MR. EDWARDS: I do appreciate Senator Sessions’ and Congressman Norwood’s interest in the subject, and also for their participation on this panel this morning.

As you’ve heard already, one of the most frequent complaints that state and local law enforcement officers have – and this applies both before and since September 11th, and in the bad old days of the INS and currently in the new Homeland Security Department era, that police will come upon just in the course of their duty and apprehend people determined to be illegal aliens. They call the federal authorities, as you’ve heard, and are in effect told to let the lawbreakers go. Well, that kind of laxity toward enforcement of the law sends police officers who are trying to do their duty a demoralizing message, and that’s to say nothing of the dangerous consequences it holds for homeland security.

I’ve found that there are currently huge barriers when state and local police come across aliens who are violating our immigration laws. The police often don’t get cooperation from federal authorities, as you’ve heard. There’s a lack of coordination in the system such that aliens who are caught red-handed breaking immigration laws really don’t suffer any consequences for breaking the law.

It continues, sadly, that some of the federal attitude is pretty much that immigration violations don’t really matter, and that sends the wrong signal, especially, as Senator Sessions put it, for a country that is built upon the rule of law. Well, in this study, I sought to try to pinpoint and explore the problem areas that perpetuate this troubling situation. There are a host of homeland security, law enforcement, and, you know, good government reasons for putting America’s 700,000 state and local law officers on the beat with respect to immigration crimes.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to this breakdown in cooperation and coordination between state and local law enforcement and federal law enforcement. But, because we have limited time, I will focus my remarks today on three of the major problem areas, and you can get all the details by reading the backgrounder in full. The three topics I will focus on are authority, information, and resources.

First, there can be confusion over the legal authority that state and local police officers have to enforce federal immigration laws. As you have heard already, state and local police often make arrests for federal offenses, so it shouldn’t make a difference when it’s a violation of immigration law. After all, most immigration offenses, including entering the country illegally – without inspection is what it’s called – immigration fraud, and alien smuggling are felonies.

Now, there are gray areas such as: overstaying a temporary visa isn’t a crime, but it’s a deportable offense. There’s confusion as well that arises from federal authorities. Too many display an attitude that gave rise to an old joke. You all remember the joke, what does INS stand for? “I’m not serious.” (Laughter.) Well, such an attitude among those who are charged with enforcing the laws is a sad thing.

Columnist Michelle Malkin’s book, “Invasion,” cites a couple of good examples of this attitude. She quoted a district – a deputy district director of INS who is in Georgia, and he said, quote, “it’s not a crime to be in the U.S. illegally, it’s a violation of civil law.” End of quote. She also cited an INS spokesman in California, who called illegal aliens quote, “law-abiding citizens.” Well, in point of fact, they’re neither law-abiding, by definition, nor citizens. These are people you would expect to know better.

Have things changed past September 11th? Well, last month, the director of Homeland Security’s enforcement – chief enforcement officer for the state of Utah, a guy named Steve Branch, told the press as well as told every illegal alien who holds a job he’s not entitled to and every would-be illegal alien who wants an under-the-table job in America that they aren’t his bureau’s priority. Branch was quoted, “we’re not going to pick up those workers; we’re not going to detain them or even put them in proceedings.” In other words, there’s a green light flashing.

Some localities, as you have heard, put into place policies that prohibit their police officers from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. For example, New York City has an infamous sanctuary policy, and the House immigration subcommittee earlier this year held a hearing on that very policy.

The federal government has sent mixed signals that have further confused the prevailing understanding of legal authority. The Clinton Department of Justice issued a legal opinion on local police and immigration enforcement. DOJ strung together a number of court opinions, mostly from the most liberal jurisdiction in the country, the 9th Circuit. DOJ then narrowly construed the legal authority of state and local law enforcement over immigration violations. You know, I will note that the 9th Circuit is the most often reversed of the circuits in this land; that could be interpreted as meaning the liberal judges on the left coast don’t always get things right. But you know, interestingly, even the Clinton Justice Department acknowledged, quote, “it is well settled that state law enforcement officers are permitted to enforce federal statutes where such enforcement activities do not impair federal regulatory interests.”

Now, the current Justice Department has drafted a legal opinion with a broader, in my opinion, more constitutionally founded reading. This opinion has not been published, but last year it was reported on in the press. The recent opinion apparently argues that states, as sovereign entities, inherently have authority to enforce civil and criminal violations of federal immigration law; that is, states retain a very extensive portion of active sovereignty, which is the way it was put in Federalist Paper 45. That’s to say that authority to enforce the law of the land inherently belongs to states.

The second area where there is a huge breakdown involving – involves information sharing. I think Senator Sessions stated earlier that the police officers on the beat have a strong information sharing culture. They frequently consult the user-friendly National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, database. NCIC, again, is part of the law enforcement culture. NCIC contains information about outstanding warrants and fugitives, and it gives quick responses. When you’re pulled over – I’m sure some of you have been pulled over on the side of the road by a police officer, and when he checks your license and goes back to his car, he may be – he’s not always, but may be checking NCIC to see if there are warrants on you. So, you know, it’s a very – it seems like forever when you’re sitting there, of course, but, you know, it’s a very short, quick response that you get through that system.

But, until recently, NCIC had nothing in it about immigration violators. Last year, the Justice Department began listing absconders on NCIC. Let me emphasize: began listing. Absconders, as you know, are the aliens who are under final order of deportation or removal but they never left the country. Only a fraction of the more than 300,000 absconders has yet been listed on NCIC, and virtually no other immigration criminals are on the NCIC system.

So, when police need immigration violation or immigration status checks, they generally have to go through a secondary, somewhat more onerous process. That’s through the Law Enforcement Support Center, which is operated formerly by INS, I suppose it’s now under ICE. LESC can take much longer, sometimes hours; so it’s not something that the officer, at the time they stop someone, can run a check and quickly get an answer through that system. It has not really been integrated as part of the law enforcement culture, and it’s of much less use, as I said, to the cop on the beat.

Well, third, of course, more resources are needed to cover the costs of detaining, processing, and transporting illegal and criminal aliens. Presently, everything is backwards from what you would expect it to be. State and local law enforcers and taxpayers incur the costs, the brunt of the costs of enforcing immigration violations, while the lawbreakers really suffer very little. In other words, immigration crimes do pay for the lawbreakers and cost the public. In a properly constructed system, the incentives would be the other way around: crime would not pay for the criminal, it would cost the criminal, and the police who do their jobs would reap the rewards. You know, holding illegal and criminal aliens, even for a short time, can take resources; and again, those costs are mostly borne at the state or local level.

Now, there is some federal assistance. There’s the SCAAP program, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. This helps to reimburse a portion of the costs that are incurred, but only a portion. Congress funded SCAAP last year at $585 million. It cut SCAAP funding this year to less than half, to about $250 million.

Most immigration lawbreakers aren’t held accountable for their actions; that is, if they’re caught, they may well be let go. About the worst consequence is that they get a free trip home. There’s no individual accountability and no real price for breaking the law. A couple of recent examples show how, for all the talk about homeland security and securing our borders, the country remains highly vulnerable and unsecured.

Last month, police in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, stopped a truck at a seat-belt checkpoint, and the two men in the front weren’t wearing their seat belts. Police found the truck packed with nine people, seven of them were illegal Mexican aliens. The police contacted immigration officials. The feds first told the police to check with the LESC system; then they said: oh, just check NCIC. Well, NCIC didn’t list any warrants for any of the aliens there, so the police let the aliens go, but with a warning about wearing seat belts.

Two weeks ago, in the Indiana district of the House immigration subcommittee chairman in fact, state troopers of Indiana pulled over two vehicles in three days on Interstate 70. One van had about 15 people, one of whom was wanted on felony drug trafficking. The other van had Arizona plates, the ignition switch had been tinkered with, and it made it look stolen. The driver didn’t have a valid driver’s license, so the troopers called and immigration authorities actually came and took custody of the nine, it turned out to be Mexicans in this instance. And you know what happened? They were issued summonses and released.

Let me summarize with this: it seems that we should start to treat immigration violations as precursor crimes. Immigration violations that go unpunished frequently lead to additional violations of law, whether it’s unlawful employment, or benefit fraud, document fraud, sham marriages, identity theft, smuggling rings of drugs and aliens, or even terrorism. Clarifying legal authority, improving two-way information sharing, and finding additional resources would help secure our homeland. It would help close the gaps that frustrate police officers who are trying to do their jobs. It would stem the practice of what some have called a federal catch-and-release program.

In conclusion, we need to apply the broken windows theory of policing to immigration. This would help to reestablish the rule of law, re-instill respect for the law, and restore public safety for those who abide by the law. State and local police are the eyes and ears on the streets, they’re the manpower, or could be, to achieve our result. Thank you very much.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Jim. Now we will hear from Assistant Attorney General Lowe about a case study that was Alabama’s own experience in dealing with immigration authorities and trying to get its own law enforcement people up to speed on their – the abilities they have towards immigration law.

HARAN LOWE: Okay, thank you very much, and I thank the Center for inviting us up. First thing, let me get one thing straight. I’m a lawyer for the Department – the Alabama Department of Public Safety, the assistant attorney general, and I have to be if I represent the state or any division thereof. So I am one of DPS’ five lawyers.

Several weeks ago, I was approached on behest of Senator Sessions through our colonel about putting a memorandum of agreement together to work with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of Homeland Security. And very frankly, at first I met a senior agent that came down and put on a PowerPoint demonstration to myself, the colonels, the light colonels, and other people, and I’m going: okay, this is something else the federal government wants me to do.

All right, now, let’s think about it for a minute. Like I said, it’s the Alabama Department of Public Safety. Our job is to serve and protect the people of Alabama as courteously as possible, okay? And we don’t care if you’re legal, illegal, native born, whatever; our job is to serve and protect you. If you come through Alabama, like they said, most of the time the only thing you’re going to see is one of my blue-and-grays; and I hope he’s smiling and he’s courteous if he stops you, okay? We only have 697 sworn officers in the Department of Public Safety. I will bet I have 335 road patrol officers from a major down. I don’t have a lot of people; the Department doesn’t have a lot of people. We’re trying to get more, we’re trying to – every other state was trying to find the money to get them, okay?

When I first started doing this, the people from ICE – like I said, I had kind of – what’s going on here? And one thing I do want to put aside: we did not have a language barrier between us and the people from Washington, D.C. They kind of did understand us after a while. We decided that, while we were working on this memorandum of understanding, that they were going to come down and do a 4-hour block of instruction to our personnel, both sworn and unsworn. The reason being our driver’s license examiners are some of the first people who meet foreign nationals and look at their documents because everyone wants a driver’s license, okay? Everyone wants a driver’s license. Also, we wanted our PCOs – Police Communication Officers – to get this training. These are – this is the person on the other end of the radio when the trooper calls and says: please check so and so. If they weren’t aware of the law enforcement database, they weren’t going to ask for it. Okay, so we’re trying to make it all work together.

The whole basis for this is knowledge; the more knowledge my officer in the field has, the better he can react. Okay, I did a phone call the other day and checked, since we had these 4-hour blocks of instructions, and the use of the databases has really picked up; and this occurred in May, okay. Also, somebody said, well, is this information any good? Well, back about the end of May sometime, probably after Labor Day, the ICE people were down, and they were giving these 4-hour blocks of instructions at our different posts all of a sudden. And at one of our posts, an officer called Martin, Trooper Martin, attended along with Cas; Cas is his dog. (Laughter.) It’s a little warm down there, so Cas was invited in.

And over near the congressman’s border, right outside of Auburn at milepost 65 on June the 3rd at 10:30 at night, the trooper stopped two foreign nationals for speeding. Talking to them, he found out that they had ID cards but they had no driver’s license. So they kept checking and checking, and during these 4-hour blocks they had been taught Spanish names, how they were – and he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted. So he got their permission to search and got Cas on the ground, and he found 24 pounds of heroin – 24 pounds of heroin, $4.3 million worth on the street. That’s important to us. That’s knowledge that we have learned through our contacts with Homeland Security.

Now, you heard terrorists. In Alabama, if you’re familiar at all, we’re getting ready to try a terrorist, homegrown. Who found him? A local police officer. Everybody we had, everybody the federals had looked for this guy for two and a half years just absolutely solid and we couldn’t find him. A local police officer found him. So that is really important. We’re going to work on this memorandum of agreement; we’re trying now to determine what authority they will have. This is not like Florida: we don’t have task forces, we’re not going to have enough people to have a task force.

We’re going to be reactive. When one of our troopers finds somebody, the troopers that are trained in this are going to go out and talk with them and it probably – they may get turned loose. They might have the documents they need to be here, fine. We’re not going on a hunt. In fact, the department has a written order of biased-based policing: it doesn’t occur, it will not occur, our colonel will not allow it. If it does occur, it’s reported by another trooper, a federal officer, people, anything else, it’s going to get investigated. We don’t want it, this is not going to be the proverbial witch hunt. If we see them, they’re wanted, we’re going to arrest them.

One of the major holdups in the program is – like I said, we have 335 officers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that’s total. If our officers arrest a non – an alien, right now we would have to transport him to Etowah County in north Alabama, northeast Alabama, or to a city jail near Mobile. That’s the only two facilities that can hold immigration prisoners at this point in time, if that’s what we’re holding them under. Now, if they committed a felony in Alabama, we would be glad to lodge you in a county jail very quickly. We are trying, and with ICE’s help, to get a lot more of our county jail facilities approved for sending to our holds because it’s just totally impractical for me to have to try to move a trooper the full length of the state, and that’s basically it.

We’re looking forward to this work and Senator Sessions has been most helpful. The department has been most helpful to us. Like I say, when I first got this thing, I went – we’re getting some funding, we’re getting what we need, and I think it’s going to be a really good step forward for everybody in Alabama because remember this, the illegal alien is, on many occasions, a person that’s being taken advantage of by other people and they deserve our protection as well. Thank you.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you, Mr. Lowe. Let’s start with questions just for the congressman, so – because he’s going to have to run. Maybe another thing to start with will be all the people who want to abolish America’s borders and eliminate all immigration laws should stand up and explain why, and if there isn’t anybody who wants to do that, then we will take other questions for the congressman first. Questions from anyone? Yes? If you could identify yourself –

Q: I’m Bill McDonald of Georgetown University and I’m not in favor of abandoning the borders, but I am curious about the statistic that you were citing; I just don’t know where to find it. So 3,800, you say, are of interest, are possibly terrorists? Is that –

REP. NORWOOD: Of 25,000 of interest to national security, there are 3,800 that have known connections to al Qaeda, and I don’t have references to tell you exactly where to go to, but that pretty blonde almost right in front of you will give you the connection – (laughter) – for the record.

MR. KRIKORIAN: I think – yes, sir?

Q: (Inaudible) – what kind of bipartisan effort, legislation are you supporting?

REP. NORWOOD: What kind of bipartisan --

Q: (Inaudible) – Republicans?

REP. NORWOOD: What kind of bipartisan effort do we have with whom?

Q: The possible legislation.

REP. NORWOOD: I don’t know that there is a bipartisan effort. We are in the process of thinking through the problem of having no immigration laws – and that is the effect when you don’t enforce them – and what to do about it. Somebody ought to think about this, and that’s really what we’re doing. It appears, at least from where we are in little meetings and discussions and caucuses and all that kind of junk, it appears that we will probably have to seek a legislative solution, and I don’t think it’s going to be very hard at all to get it bipartisan. We will find out how many members of Congress want to abolish immigration laws and how many want to follow the law of the land, simple as that.

Q: If I may follow up, what would be the timing? I mean, we’re already in summer. If you are thinking that legislation would be needed, is this something that could be done this year or are we talking about –

REP. NORWOOD: Oh, I feel sure it can be done this year. The timing is the rest of my life. If I get into this, I’m going to stay in this forever, until we do something about it and start speaking out across the country that we are actually no longer a nation of laws when we allow 13 million people to break the law and everybody smiles. And you call the feds and the feds say: well, that’s okay. We will see.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Yes, ma’am?

Q: (Inaudible) – I’m with NPR. Is Georgia considering training its state troopers, and –

REP. NORWOOD: I really don’t know. Our governor was here yesterday, if I had known you wanted to know, I would have asked him.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Anyone else? Yes?

Q: This is – (unintelligible) – from CRS. I’m just curious, what type of legislation are you thinking about that would add to or basically that would add to the legislation that has already been passed in previous years?

REP. NORWOOD: Well, none of it has been passed in previous years, it is being upheld. In fact, we just did that two nights ago. I alluded to that earlier, but I can’t remember if it was ’96 or ’97 where we passed an immigration bill and basically cities like New York and Houston are thumbing their nose at it; they’re passing city ordinances that say: listen, whatever you do, don’t call the feds in on this, they might catch a terrorist. And I’m open for – if you’re from CRS, you need to be telling me some of the ways we can put – (inaudible).

MR. KRIKORIAN: There is one thing I just wanted to point out that I didn’t know, actually. I learned a few days go that Mexico apparently requires its local law enforcement to cooperate with immigration authorities. It’s actually a statutory requirement in Mexico. So, in a sense, what we would really be doing is catching up with Mexico.

REP. NORWOOD: I don’t think we can. I don’t think we can catch up with Mexico on how they deal with immigration on their southern border. Do we know how they do that?

MR. KRIKORIAN: We have a paper on that, actually.

REP. NORWOOD: Yeah, how does Mexico handle immigration problems on their southern border?

MR. KRIKORIAN: Vigorously.

REP. NORWOOD: Like shooting people?

MR. KRIKORIAN: Well, I don’t know if they’re shooting people.

REP. NORWOOD: Some people say they do; I don’t know, I haven’t been there. But on our end of the border, the northern end of the Mexican border, we’re supposed to, everybody turn their head and you all come, and on their end of their southern border they say wait a minute, we don’t want just everybody coming into Mexico that can cross the border, we will shoot you. I’m not suggesting we do that on our side, I am suggesting we simply follow the law. And to do that, you have to enforce the law in the underbelly of America, not just at the borders. If you tell people all you got to do is slip across and everybody else will turn away and you can do what you want to do, you’re going to encourage this and it will never stop. No matter how many Border Patrol you put down there – and you can never put enough – if you allow people to believe if you can just get across the border, no problem. I don’t know what I would do if I was – (inaudible). Yes, ma’am?

MR. KRIKORIAN: Julia?

Q: Julia Malone, Cox Newspapers. Mr. Norwood, if you’re not necessarily decided on what kind of legislation you want to write, are you talking to some other members? Is there some kind of – are you –

REP.NORWOOD: We have ideas.

Q: – is this any kind of new – you sound like you are planning a new kind of campaign or crusade. Is that –

REP. NORWOOD: I think you can call it a crusade. I have a problem with that; when I get into things, it turns into a crusade. We’re talking to other members and we have some ideas. We’re not necessarily quite ready to bring those ideas forth until we are absolutely sure we have done as good a job as we can do in not making any mistakes in the legislation.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Yes, sir?

Q: Congressman, how do you feel about the use of the Mexican identification card that is being distributed? I think we have – at least we have spoken to -- about the problem on the immigrants on the – (inaudible) – one way or another, in favor or against the validity or the use of those cards?

REP. NORWOOD: No, but I will tell you what my reaction to them is. It was interesting to me that you can open a bank account in America using that Mexican identification card but you can’t open a bank account in Mexico with it. Think about that.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Do you know if Mexico – I mean, if Alabama has any – has accepted the Matricula Consular, that’s the card he’s asking about? I don’t mean to put you on the spot, if you don’t know, that’s fine.

MR. LOWE: Well, that is one of the documents that our road troopers get shown. It’s gross effect is probably not that much. It’s one of the things that would come up – (inaudible) – driver’s license. In fact, we were very fortunate, through the mode carrier funding, to be able to get eight computer – microscopes for document work on CDLs because we want to make sure those are not forgeries. But, you know, it works real well on a social security card, visas, it’s amazing what it will work on, and it’s amazing how many forgeries you have.

Again, information; if they hadn’t have come down and showed us what the documents were – you know, our examiners, I think, had had a class a year or so before, but not our road troopers and our ABI people like that, we wouldn’t even know what we were looking for. When we got these microscopes, we said oh, lookey here, this is a new version. And our foreign nationals or illegals are paying God-awful amounts of money to people who are violating the law to get these documents, okay.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Thank you. Anyone, Marvin?

Q: (Inaudible) – for Mr. Edwards, it’s something that I really didn’t understand when you talked. You said something about treating migration violations as a pre-crime?

MR. EDWARDS: Precursor crime.

Q: Can you tell – what do you mean?

MR. EDWARDS: Let me explain it this way. You have to commit certain crimes to get to larger crimes. And, by way of moving toward larger crimes, you, you know, in the course of things, commit things that are smaller. And oftentimes those smaller violations are kind of a setup and ahead of time of the larger violations. So what I’m concluding there is that, if you start to do like Mayor Giuliani did in New York and enforce things like jumping the fare – turnstile at subway stations, things like that, and go after graffiti, broken windows, things like that, that are pretty small, but then you start to say that those are indicators – and it has been, you know, shown that those are indicators of – if those aren’t prosecuted, then you have the commission of larger crimes; you know, armed robberies and so forth. And so, what you want to do is try to nip the criminal activity sooner rather than later, and so that’s the analogy I was trying to make.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Anyone else? Yes, go ahead.

Q: There has been some concern that training state troopers and local police to – (inaudible) – will put some distrust in the community so they won’t report – (inaudible). Do you, you know, in response to --

MR. LOWE: Well, I live in Chilton County, Alabama, which is a rural county and has like a lot of foreign nationals in it. I practiced law on the outside world for many, many years before I went with the state, so I’m fairly familiar with the CB stuff on domestic violence.

We have found that our officers – not only our road troopers, but the deputies, sheriffs who actually probably deal with the – a road trooper dealing with a domestic violence would be highly unusual. But with the sheriffs, they have developed a rapport with the community and it’s not affecting it. It may in the future at some point in time, but right now it’s not affecting it. It’s a rapport we developed – in fact, one of the magistrates in a small city in Alabama called me the other day because she knew I worked for the Department of Public Safety. And there was a legal immigrant in her office, and he was complaining about the illegals getting driver’s licenses; and, you know, how were they doing this, and he gave us some information, which we’re going to use. But we have got a good rapport.

We’re designing an outreach program, and again, we’re learning from ICE on how to do an outreach program. We have a major that this is his thing. We have six majors in our – (chuckles) – in our troops, and we have one that does – this is his baby and he is working at it every day, because we don’t want anybody to think that we’re just out on a pure search, scourge of the earth, you know, back the 747 up and fly everybody out of here, because that’s not what we’re doing. We are trying to better serve the people of Alabama and anybody who happens to be there through gaining more knowledge, gaining understanding, knowing that the foreign nationals have certain rights: to have their counselor contacted or for us to give them information to contact them. We get that training, the first thing that we did was turn around and give it to the Alabama Sheriffs Association jail coordinator so he could get to all his sheriffs and say: when you all put somebody in jail, they have these rights, you know.

So, it’s a learning program, it’s information, and that’s – it has got to be a two-way street. I understand that from this 24-pound bust that we had. I think the only way that ICE learned that one of the people had already been deported before was from us; and these people were actually in federal custody at that point in time, I think. So the communication may need to be a little improved among the federal agencies also, okay? But as far as your question, no. We’re trying our – I mean, the sheriffs, the local police are setting – they have got some grants, set up schools for second languages for police officers.

Q: So it’s not a real concern –

MR. LOWE: It’s not a concern at this point in time, no ma’am.

MR. EDWARDS: Well, if I could answer, too. I did talk about that as a great concern. It is a very good question. I did talk about that in the paper, and briefly, you know, law enforcement officers and prosecutors have discretion to a degree. And so, you know, I don’t think anybody would anticipate that, if there is a woman standing here who is reporting a crime – she has just got beat up by her husband or whoever, in a domestic violence incident or something – that that would be the person you would ask about their immigration status. Now, it may be the person who did the beating that you need to ask the immigration status questions to; but, you know, common sense application of that discretion in those sorts of circumstances. Certainly, I think anybody would welcome people to come forward and report crimes because, you know, nobody is for – that I’m aware of is for abuse of people whether they’re legal status or otherwise.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Julia, and then –

Q: Mr. Lowe, could you go over this arrest – (inaudible) – how did that – how is that affected by your ICE – what ICE – (cross talk, inaudible)?

MR. LOWE: Okay. The trooper and his dog, like I said – (chuckles) – had attended our four-hour block instruction, okay, which – about six or seven days beforehand. These people were speeding, it was the original reason of the stop. It was at 10:30 at night. He asked for a driver’s license, he didn’t get it. Then he continued to ask for identification, and from what I understand was not getting the answers that he felt he should from the instruction. He was more aware of what he was dealing with, too.

Q: He would not have asked to search the car if he had not had that instruction?

MR. LOWE: He – I’m not going to say he wouldn’t have asked. He might not have because he went further – you know, they didn’t have a driver’s license, you know, we’re going to arrest you for driving without a license. That’s a bondable offense in Alabama, which means you can sign the ticket, okay? He got into it a little bit more and he got Cas out and Cas went around there, and I understand Cas went crazy. He definitely wanted to see what was in that car. It was hidden in the firewall of the vehicle. The owner of the car wasn’t there, which was probably one of the keys. And one of them had been previously deported; I think it was a civil deportation, for overstaying a visa, the driver themselves.

Q: How did he find that out?

MR. LOWE: I don’t know. I just know that I had an INS number later and we had found that out. I don’t know if he found that out that night or not. I haven’t been able to talk to Carlton (sp) because I have been somewhere else, trying cases, and he’s been kind of popular, evidently. He is not really one of our drug people. He has the dog that works with him and he was just on routine patrol.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Yes, ma’am?

Q: Michelle Waslin, National Council of La Raza. Well, I think it’s accepted that most undocumented workers are here to work and do, in fact, work. Yet, since 1986, it has been illegal to hire undocumented, unauthorized workers. So would you suggest that local police go into businesses and other places of employment and arrest the employers that are breaking the immigration laws?

MR. EDWARDS: Are you asking me?

Q: Anyone who wants to answer.

MR. EDWARDS: Well, I will take a stab. I don’t really discuss that in the paper, other than a few times to mention that, you know, in the context in sort of the precursor crime aspect, the status as a precursor to oftentimes holding a job to see what someone hasn’t been admitted to hold. I do mention in the paper that we – you know, to my understanding, there’s nobody who would advocate roundups or that sort of thing in the job market, in the job arena, unless it’s on a kind of targeted basis or something, you have got knowledge and maybe it’s a certain sector or something. But, to the extent that an employer is breaking the law, that – I think employers do need to be held accountable for doing that, certainly. If they’re – especially if they’re knowingly doing it, they need to really be punished.

MR. KRIKORIAN: I mean, the only thing I would add, maybe, is to add some context to that – is that, in a sense, I think what we’re talking about is giving local law enforcement the tool of immigration law for them to use in the normal course of their business; as Mr. Lowe describes, stopped a car, it was speeding, and then, essentially, immigration is one of the – immigration law is one of the tools that they use in enforcing the law. If, you know, if – it seems to me that if the state or local authorities, in the normal course of their business, encountered employers violating immigration law, then that would certainly be true with them. But of course, you don’t pull over a business for speeding on the highway; I mean, that’s a different kind of thing, so it actually might not – it might not come up as often, but it seems to me it’s conceptually the same thing. In the back?

Q: Yeah, Bob Krueger from Florida. Going back to the Matricula Consular, I believe there is one state, Colorado, that has passed a law that has a negative impact on the use of that identification, which is – I also understand is basically, it can’t be – (inaudible). By extension of what – (inaudible) – are there other states that are either positively or negatively construing this, and would this not mean a good case to bring federal legislation that would allow all the states to kind of focus on what the response – it seems to me that, if the consular – the Metricula Consular from Mexico can be accepted in virtually any other country, you would have a precedent to do the same thing.

MR. EDWARDS: That’s a good point. Yes, Colorado did recently enact a law that requires the validation of different kinds of identification documents, and I think it does have – probably the Matricula falls under that. Certainly, any time you have documentation that is not under the control of the federal authorities, then there is a risk factor there, and I don’t know –

MR. KRIKORIAN: Yeah, that’s – I mean, yeah, Matriculas, I mean – we will have a panel on that at some point as well, too; but as there’s a hearing today, a House immigration subcommittee, on this very issue. But if anybody’s got any – let’s just take two more questions before – Bill, and then –

Q: Did I just hear you just say that the SCAAP funding has been cut in half? And if so, is that the result of executive or legislative as a result, and again, what does that say about the attitude – (inaudible)?

MR. EDWARDS: Well, SCAAP, again, is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program. Yes, it was cut, and in fact, it’s less than half than it was. Last fiscal year I think it was $585 million was the fund – the figure that I cited, now it’s 250 million in this fiscal year. As a signal – you know, in my view, it send a wrong signal. It diminishes the resources that are being made available to states and locals, to do what I think is a desirable thing. On the other hand, you know, it was done by congressional appropriators and then, you know, approved by Congress.

You know, I have worked on Capitol Hill and know that when the budgets are tight and you have got deficits, you got to make tough choices. And, you know, it’s not the choice I would have advised been made, but it’s the choice that was made; and they did allocate funds in other areas: on homeland security, on justice, and so forth. So, you know, people who sit on the Appropriations Committee have different views from those who are on the authorizing committees, and those who are authorizers understand that sometimes the depth of detail that is – would lead to a different conclusion than someone who is an appropriator, who has got to make the money add up, you know. So, I think that’s sad but it’s – in this instance, but, you know, there’s always next year.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Let’s take a last question and then you can bother the panelists individually. Yes, ma’am?

Q: Joan Friedman (sp) from the Naturalization Law Center. Just going back to the question some would – how comfortable someone would be committing a crime or being a witness if they felt that their immigration status was going to be questioned. How reliable and what kind of a guarantee is it for them to rely on prosecutorial discretion in protecting them when they don’t know in advance how that discretion is going to be exercised? And isn’t there really a public safety issue in putting people at risk – (inaudible)?

MR. EDWARDS: Well, to some extent, sure, but, you know, individuals make choices every day, and maybe there are things they have done that, in terms of breaking the law, that they hesitate to report crimes because also they are afraid that it will expose them to something. You hope that that’s not the case and that people would come forward and report more serious, you know, more violent, all those sorts of crimes, but individuals will have to make a choice and do what they feel is best for themselves, I suppose. I think that law enforcement would have the resources available to put out the message, to signal that we are – you know, we encourage you to report crimes, if you have been the victim of crime, report. And, you know, people talk and there’s the rumor mill, and people can make what decisions they wish. You hope that they will make the right decision and report those crimes.

MR. KRIKORIAN: Let’s cut it off here. You can feel free, please, to come up afterwards if they’re willing. Again, thanks for coming. Jim’s report as well as all our other work is on the web at cis.org, and we hope to see you at our next event. Thank you.