Immigration

Floor Speech

IMMIGRATION -- (Senate - March 06, 2008)

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Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, I rise today in support of a piece of legislation that my colleague from Georgia, Senator Isakson, and I have filed. I compliment my friends and colleagues from South Carolina, North Carolina, and Alabama for their leadership. I look forward to supporting their commonsense measures toward doing what we said we were going to do, which is secure the border.

The one thing we learned last year, as the Senator from North Carolina alluded to earlier, during the immigration reform debate is the American people don't have confidence in Congress that we are going to do what we say we are going to do when it comes to border security. There is good reason for that. Credibility on this issue is simply lacking, both with the administration, as well as with Congress. Now we have an opportunity to come back and take a commonsense approach from a legislative perspective on truly securing the border. The legislation Senator Isakson and I are introducing does this.

A lot of people have said: Senator, why don't you just enforce the laws that are on the books today? Why don't you get local law enforcement officials involved in helping secure the border and in dealing with people who are here illegally?

Well, the fact is, local law enforcement officials have very little power when it comes to dealing with folks who are in violation of a Federal immigration law, particularly when it comes to being here illegally. So what our particular piece of legislation does is, it puts the tools in the hands of those folks who are going to have the primary contact and are more likely to have the initial contact with folks who are here illegally, and that is local law enforcement officials versus someone from ICE or any other part of the Federal Government from a law enforcement standpoint.

All of us remember that three of the 9/11 hijackers were stopped on routine traffic stops by local law enforcement officials. Unfortunately, those local law enforcement officials did not have the means whereby they could check to determine whether those individuals were in this country legally or illegally. If they would have had the input--not access but the input--by the Federal Government into the NCIC, which is the national identification tracking mechanism for vehicles and drivers of vehicles that is used nationwide, then those local law enforcement officials would have known and understood those individuals were here illegally. And if they would have had the tools otherwise given in this piece of legislation, they could have dealt with and detained those individuals.

So what we seek to do with this commonsense piece of legislation is to, first of all, clarify the authority that local governments have in the normal course of carrying out their duties to help enforce our immigration laws. Secondly, it will expand the National Crime Information Centers Immigration Violators File to include those individuals who are known to be here illegally, or known to be here legally, so they can be cross-referenced in an instant and not have to worry about getting incorrect information or making assumptions.

This piece of legislation expands the 287(g) program, which is a very popular program with our law enforcement officials. Three of my counties in Georgia are already utilizing this program. What it does is, the Federal Government steps in with a county anywhere in the country to provide the law enforcement officials in that county with training and instructions as to how to deal with folks who are found to be violating our immigration laws.

Lastly, it will compensate State and local entities for immigration-enforcement-related expenses.

Madam President, common sense is what we are asking for here when it comes to enforcing the border and providing our law enforcement officials with the tools necessary to assist in making sure our borders are secure.

With that, I look forward to working with my other colleagues on their particular pieces of legislation as we move forward to make sure we restore confidence with the American people when it comes to border security, and we will be able to truly say we have secured the border, and here is how we have done it.

I yield the floor.

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