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Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, this bill is just another page from the majority's tired old playbook of inventing perceived gaps in the law and providing overly broad legislation to fix them.

DUIs are a serious problem. Over 13,000 people died in alcohol impaired driving traffic deaths in 2021, and all of those deaths were preventable. However, instead of working on proven solutions like improving access to public transportation and ride-sharing programs so that people have an alternative to driving drunk, Republicans are laying the blame for this problem at the feet of immigrants.

Let me be clear. No one here wants to see individuals who are true threats to public safety eligible for immigration benefits. However, our immigration laws already exclude public safety threats from being able to get visas or legally remain in the country. Under our current laws, this includes those who have committed serious DUI offenses.

Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a noncitizen who is convicted of or admits to committing a crime involving moral turpitude, or a CIMT, is generally inadmissible. Likewise, a noncitizen who is convicted of a CIMT, where a sentence of 1 year or longer may be imposed, is deportable.

There is substantial case law demonstrating that serious DUI offenses are considered CIMTs under current law. DUI where the maximum possible penalty is a year or more and where there is serious bodily harm; hit- and-runs; an aggravated DUI; and a DUI involving driving with knowledge of an invalid, suspended, or revoked license are all CIMTs and are, therefore, already deportable offenses.

This means that under current law, the people who are drinking and driving and putting people at risk of harm are already removable. Nonetheless, the majority is not satisfied with this. They want to deport everyone who has ever received any conviction for any DUI offense. Here is the problem with this approach: every State has a different standard for how they define and prosecute DUIs. Some States will charge people with a DUI even if they are not actually driving a car.

For example, prosecutors in Virginia convicted a man of DUI who was inebriated and asleep in the driver's seat of his car with the keys in the ignition so he could listen to music in his driveway. This case, in which the driver never even left his driveway or even turned his car all the way on, went all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court. We cannot rely on prosecutorial discretion in this type of case.

Under case law, the man in this case would not ultimately be subject to removal based on this conviction if he was a noncitizen. Nevertheless, if this bill were to be enacted, such a conviction would lead to the deportation of even a longstanding green card holder.

Remember, Mr. Speaker, we are talking here about longstanding green card holders, not illegal aliens. These are people who entered the country legally, who may have been here for 20 or 30 years, who have American citizen spouses and children.

If this bill were enacted, such a conviction of sleeping in your own car inebriated in your own driveway going nowhere would get you deported.

If this bill fixed a serious gap in the law, I would be supportive. Nevertheless, this bill doesn't do that. It puts people who are here legally at risk of removal for making even a minor mistake that harmed no one, all at a time when immigration courts have historic backlogs and the Republicans are refusing to provide DHS with the resources it needs to enforce the laws currently on the books.

This is purely for show, but I would expect nothing less from a party that has admitted they would rather wait to fix the problems in our immigration system so that President Trump can preserve the issue for his campaign than actually work toward meaningful reform now.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. NADLER. Jayapal), the ranking Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee.
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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the last few speakers on the Republican side spent most of their time not addressing this bill but addressing the general crisis at our southern border.

The fact is there is a crisis. We all know that. The fact is that one of the major problems--and Republicans say this all the time, and they are right--is catch and release.

Someone is caught or more usually turns themselves in to a Border Patrol officer, claims asylum, and is given a court date 4 years, 5 years down the road. Why? Because we do not have enough asylum officers. We do not have enough asylum judges.

President Biden requested $14 billion to increase the number of Border Patrol men and women and to increase the number of asylum judges and immigration judges so that you wouldn't have catch and release; so that people who claimed asylum would have their cases adjudicated in weeks, not in years.

Those who are entitled to asylum would be admitted to the country and could work and those who are not could be swiftly removed, deported from the country.

Do our Republican colleagues want to do that? No. They don't want to give the President the means of alleviating this problem. They want a campaign issue, and they are very open about it.

You have in the Senate a painstakingly negotiated and extraordinarily conservative--so we hear, I haven't seen the text yet--strong immigration bill negotiated by such liberals as Senator Lankford and Senator Graham, and they are going to pass it, in all likelihood.

The Republicans in the House say we won't even look at it. Why? Because the former President, President Trump, said don't pass anything. I want a campaign issue.

They don't want to solve the problem. They want to keep the problem going as a campaign issue, and they said it themselves.

Don't get up here and talk about the problems on the southern border when you won't give this President any of the authority or the means that he seeks to deal with it when you say, as Speaker Johnson said, you are not going to even look at the bill from the Senate because it isn't perfect. Since when do we insist on perfect legislation?

Now, Mr. Speaker, let's get to this bill. DUIs are a serious problem, and no one who poses a threat to public safety should be eligible for immigration benefits, but that is already the case under current law.

This legislation is a gross overreach that would lead to absurd consequences and deportation for people who pose no threat to our country, such as the examples we heard of someone who, rather than driving drunk, is in his own car inebriated with the key turned on, listening to music in his own driveway, posing a threat to no one.

Even for people who have been here many years, with American citizen spouses and children, that would lead to automatic deportation while doing nothing that our laws do not already do to deter people from driving under the influence--driving under the influence as opposed to sitting in their driveway under the influence.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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