SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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57–232
1999
PROBLEMS RELATED TO CRIMINAL ALIENS IN THE STATE OF UTAH
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
IMMIGRATION AND CLAIMS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JULY 27, 1998
Serial No. 85
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
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For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr., Wisconsin
BILL McCOLLUM, Florida
GEORGE W. GEKAS, Pennsylvania
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
LAMAR SMITH, Texas
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
CHARLES T. CANADY, Florida
BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia
STEPHEN E. BUYER, Indiana
ED BRYANT, Tennessee
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
BOB BARR, Georgia
WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee
ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas
EDWARD A. PEASE, Indiana
CHRIS CANNON, Utah
JAMES E. ROGAN, California
MARY BONO, California
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JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan
BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
RICK BOUCHER, Virginia
JERROLD NADLER, New York
ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia
MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina
ZOE LOFGREN, California
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
MAXINE WATERS, California
MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey
THOMAS E. MOONEY, Chief of Staff-General Counsel
JULIAN EPSTEIN, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chairman
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
WILLIAM L. JENKINS, Tennessee
EDWARD A. PEASE, Indiana
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CHRIS CANNON, Utah
ED BRYANT, Tennessee
JAMES E. ROGAN, California
MARY BONO, California
MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
ZOE LOFGREN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
CORDIA A. STROM, Chief Counsel
EDWARD R. GRANT, Counsel
GEORGE FISHMAN, Counsel
MARTINA HONE, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
HEARING DATE
July 27, 1998
OPENING STATEMENT
Smith, Hon. Lamar, a Representative in Congress from the State of Texas, and chairman, Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims
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WITNESSES
Callaghan, Mary, Commissioner, Salt Lake County Commission
Cannon, Chris, a Representative in Congress from the State of Utah
Kennard, Aaron, Sheriff, Salt Lake County
Reed, Mark, Regional Director, Central Region, Immigration and Naturalization Service
Schwendiman, David J., United States Attorney, District of Utah, U.S. Department of Justice
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Callaghan, Mary, Commissioner, Salt Lake County Commission: Prepared statement
Cannon, Chris, a Representative in Congress from the State of Utah: Prepared statement
Kennard, Aaron, Sheriff, Salt Lake County: Prepared statement
Reed, Mark, Regional Director, Central Region, Immigration and Naturalization Service: Prepared statement
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Schwendiman, David J., United States Attorney, District of Utah, U.S. Department of Justice: Prepared statement
PROBLEMS RELATED TO CRIMINAL ALIENS IN THE STATE OF UTAH
MONDAY, JULY 27, 1998
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Immigration
and Claims,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9 a.m. in the Chapman Branch Library, 577 South 900 West, Salt Lake City, Utah, Lamar Smith [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Lamar Smith and Christopher B. Cannon.
Staff Present: Jim Wilon, Counsel; Judy Knott, Staff Assistant.
OPENING STATEMENT OF PRESIDING CHAIRMAN SMITH
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Mr. SMITH. The field hearing of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives will come to order.
I want to make some personal comments before we get into the official opening statements.
First of all, let me say to Congressman Cannon's friends and supporters and constituents and fellow law enforcement officials, that he has already earned a reputation in Washington for being thoughtful and smart, for having common sense and good judgment.
In addition to that, it is all too rare in Congress that we have members who have good business sense, and Chris Cannon is one of those individuals. That is why it is a pleasure for me to serve with him. It is certainly a pleasure to have him on the Immigration Subcommittee as well.
I have been chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee now for almost 4 years, but this is the first field hearing that the Immigration Subcommittee has held while I have been chairman. We would not be here but for the fact that all of us, and I in particular, have great respect for Congressman Cannon and his judgment. When he comes to me on the House floor, which he has been doing for many months now, and says, ''We have a problem in Salt Lake and I want you to hear about it and see it firsthand,'' I am going to be there. And the fact that this is our first field hearing indicates not only my high regard for Chris Cannon, but also the importance of the subject itself.
Let me mention one other thing about Congressman Cannon. When I arrived at the airport late last night, Congressman Cannon and his wife and their 4-month-old baby daughter met me at the gate and picked me up. And then all four of us, including the baby, went for at least an hour-long tour of the city, which shows the great pride he has, not only in his community, but also in his church, I might add, if that is not mixing church and state too much today.
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And then, of course, he had to drive back home and then come back this morning another hour's drive or more, given the construction on the highway, for a 7 o'clock breakfast. It was most impressive for me to see firsthand what Chris Cannon does for friends as well as what he does for constituents.
Now we are going to get to opening statements. After the opening statements, we will introduce the witnesses on the panels, hear their testimony, ask them questions, and look forward to their answers.
I will give my opening statement and then recognize Congressman Cannon for his immediately after.
The most fundamental obligation of any government is to ensure public safety. Our Federal, State, and local governments have a duty to work together to fight crime and keep our streets safe for American families and American communities.
Congressman Cannon, my Immigration Subcommittee colleague, has been a strong advocate for the people of Utah on public safety issues and on many other issues as well. I am grateful that he has invited me to Salt Lake City to hear your concerns so we can look for solutions together.
Unfortunately, some of the problems occurring in Salt Lake City are also found in other American cities. In fact, they are all too familiar.
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Illegal immigrants cross the border and travel within the United States with little fear of being apprehended or deported. There are now more than five million illegal aliens within the United States, with another quarter million arriving every year, and those are very, very conservative figures.
Some of these illegal aliens are also habitual criminals, and many, of course, are drug traffickers as well. They bring with them a plague of violence, theft and drug addiction, and they impose a harsh fiscal cost on local taxpayers who must foot the bill for new jails and increased law enforcement.
Local government law enforcement officials work hard to cope with this threat to public safety, but when they are faced with a massive and continual onslaught of criminal illegal aliens, they can easily become overwhelmed.
When there is not enough space in the jails and prisons, criminal illegal aliens may have to be released. When the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not apprehend and detain and deport illegal aliens, they go right back into American communities where they often commit additional crimes.
This is a vicious circle. When criminals believe they will not be punished, they increase their criminal activity, which makes it even harder for local law enforcement to keep up.
What is needed is a higher level of communication and cooperation among local, State, and Federal officials. You have a right to expect that when a criminal is arrested, the INS will help determine quickly if he or she is an illegal alien. If a criminal is an illegal alien, the INS should detain and deport that person immediately.
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Finally, if a deported criminal alien reenters this country illegally, he or she should be punished to the full extent of the law.
Since 1994, Congress has given the INS more money each year for Border Patrol, interior enforcement, and detention facilities. However, at the same time that resources have been increased, the problems of illegal immigration have grown. It is not enough to increase funding. The agency must also improve its management and operations.
We look forward today to hearing the testimony of witnesses on how the local, state, and Federal authorities can work together to address the problems brought to Utah by criminal illegal aliens. I hope today's hearing will be a useful contribution to that cooperative effort. I will now recognize the gentleman from Utah, Representative Cannon.
STATEMENT OF CHRIS CANNON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF UTAH
Mr. CANNON. Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, fellow citizens, I would like to thank you all for gathering here today in Utah on an issue that I believe we are all increasingly aware of and concerned about—illegal immigration.
When I first went to Congress, almost 2 years ago now, and started talking about some of the illegal immigrant problems back home, most people were pretty skeptical.
Then I presented these statistics, as reported in 1995, by the Salt Lake County Board of Commissioners:
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Twenty percent of illegal aliens migrating to Utah do so for criminal activity—bringing drugs to sell or exchange for stolen goods, mostly guns;
Forty-five percent of homicides in Salt Lake County involve illegal aliens; and
Eighty percent of those arrested for felony level narcotics violations in Salt Lake County—80 percent were undocumented aliens, but only 6 percent of these ended up in INS hands, so we are not moving them very well.
The problems of illegal immigration no longer touch only our border States such as California, New York, Florida and the chairman's own State of Texas. In fact, INS statistics show that out of every three illegal aliens that cross the border, only one is picked up by the border guard.
As a result, Salt Lake City, at the crossroads of Interstate 15 which extends up from the south, and Interstate 80, which extends east and west, has today become the new area of opportunity for drug-trafficking, in particular, and illegal immigration, in general, as these problems spread out from our border States and into our interior States—like Utah.
Today, we will hear testimony from several witnesses who will describe the illegal immigration situation in Utah and the ways in which local, State and Federal representatives have come together to address this issue.
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At the Federal level, I have worked with my congressional colleagues on several measures to both elevate awareness of the interior illegal immigration enforcement problem and find ways to solve it, including:
Increasing personnel in and funding for the INS offices located in interior States to help apprehend and process criminal aliens;.
Equipping these offices and jails nationwide with identification systems linked to the FBI and other law enforcement databases to help streamline processing of criminal aliens;
Making available to our interior States a program that has been very successful in California that will place an INS agent actually in jails in areas with high concentration of criminal aliens to identify and process them before arraignment and remove them as quickly as possible in the Federal system; and,
Instituting a new program that will allow the cross-deputization of local, State and Federal law enforcement so they can work together better to apprehend and deport criminal aliens.
For the past 2 years, the Utah delegation has worked to include language within both the House and Senate Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary Appropriations bills for fiscal years 1998 and 1999 to encourage the INS and Marshals Service to focus on the problem that many of the witnesses will talk about, that is, the lack of detention space to hold criminal aliens.
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This same appropriations bill for fiscal year 1999 has language requesting that the INS develop a comprehensive interior enforcement strategy—I will be interested in hearing about the progress on this strategy in the hearing today.
With that, I would just like to say again that I appreciate the dedication of everyone here present, in putting forth to stop criminal illegal immigration. I look forward to taking a closer look at these issues today and continuing to work together to combat this serious problem.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cannon follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHRIS CANNON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF UTAH
FIELD HEARING ON PROBLEMS RELATED TO CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIENS IN THE STATE OF UTAH
Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, fellow citizens, I would like to thank all of you for gathering here today in Utah on an issue that I believe we are all increasingly aware of and concerned about—illegal immigration.
When I first went to Congress, almost two years ago now, and started to talk about some of the illegal immigration problems back home, most people were pretty skeptical.
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Then I presented these statistics, as reported in 1995 by the Salt Lake County Board of Commissioners:
20 percent of illegal aliens migrating to Utah do so for criminal activity—bringing drugs to sell or exchange for stolen goods (mostly guns);
45 percent of homicides in Salt Lake County involved illegal aliens; and
80 percent of those arrested for felony level narcotics violations in Salt Lake City were undocumented aliens, but only six percent of these ended up in INS hands.
The problems of illegal immigration no longer touch only our border states such as California, New York, Florida and the Chairman's own state of Texas. In fact, INS statistics show that out of every three illegal aliens to cross the border, only one is picked up by the border guard.
As a result, Salt Lake City, at the crossroads of Interstate 15 which extends up from the south, and Interstate 80, which extends out from the west, has become today a new area of opportunity for drug-trafficking, in particular, and illegal immigration, in general, as these problems spread out from our border states and into our interior states—like Utah.
Today, we will hear testimony from several witnesses who will describe the illegal immigration situation in Utah and the ways in which local, state and federal representatives have come together to address this issue.
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At the federal level, I have worked with my congressional colleagues on several measures to both elevate awareness of the interior illegal immigration enforcement problem and find ways to solve it, including:
increasing personnel in and funding for INS offices located in interior states to help apprehend and process criminal aliens;
equipping these offices and jails nationwide with identification systems linked to the FBI and other law enforcement databases to help streamline processing of criminal aliens;
making available to our interior states a program that has been very successful in California that will place an INS agent actually in jails in areas with high concentration of criminal aliens to identify and process them before arraignment and remove them as quickly as possible; and
instituting a new program that will allow the cross-deputization of local, state and federal law enforcement so that they can work together better to apprehend and deport criminal aliens.
For the past two years, the Utah delegation has worked to include language within both the House and Senate Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary Appropriations bills for fiscal year 1999 to encourage the INS and Marshal Service to focus on a problem that many of the witnesses will talk about, the lack of detention space for apprehended criminal aliens.
This same appropriations bill has included language requesting that the INS develop a comprehensive interior enforcement strategy—I will be interested in hearing about the progress on this strategy.
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With that, I would just like to say again that I appreciate the dedication of everyone present here toward putting a stop to criminal illegal immigration. I look forward to taking a closer look at these issues today and continuing to work together to combat this serious problem.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you. We will now go to our first panel: Ms. Mary Callaghan, Commissioner, Salt Lake County Commission; and Mr. Aaron D. Kennard, Sheriff, Salt Lake County.
Ms. Callaghan, if you will begin.
STATEMENT OF MARY CALLAGHAN, COMMISSIONER, SALT LAKE COUNTY COMMISSION
Ms. CALLAGHAN. Chairman Smith, Congressman Cannon, committee staff, welcome to Salt Lake City. I am Mary Callaghan, a member of the Salt Lake County Board of Commissioners and the Chair of Salt Lake County Criminal Justice Advisory Committee. I come before you to share some of our grave concerns regarding the Federal Government's failure to fulfill its responsibility in removing criminal undocumented immigrants from our community.
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Over the past few years, a consistent statistic which has been very troublesome to us is the fact that approximately 80 percent of all felony drug arrests in Salt Lake City are of undocumented immigrants. Indeed, the percentage of undocumented immigrants being arrested on felony drug charges has increased from 47 percent of all arrests county-wide in 1996 to 53 percent in 1997.
There are many cases of this which we will address. Nevertheless, please be aware that despite Salt Lake County's and its 13 cities' recent efforts including 350 new jail beds, additional officers and equipment, the Salt Lake City number has remained at 80 percent since 1994 when it became apparent that we had a crisis on our hands. Attached to my testimony are two pages listing Salt Lake County's efforts over the past 3 years to address this issue; everything from incarceration, patrol and investigations, courts, coordination, substance abuse prevention and treatment, and youth services. This is a cost to our taxpayers. To have such a small percentage of our population who are here unlawfully committing so many serious crimes including homicide, attempted murder, drug sales, etc., is totally unacceptable.
Of equal concern is the fact that so far in 1998 we have had to release 500 other jail inmates who should have been detained but have been freed due to the Federal decree which places a cap on the total number of detainees within our jail. If we are not holding 100 to 140 undocumented immigrants on a typical day, we would not be having this problem to this extent. As it is, we are spending 132 million property tax dollars on a new jail in part to address these required releases. We absolutely cannot let undocumented immigrant drug dealers have free reign over our streets. We, as local residents, cities counties, and the state, are doing our part to address this problem. But, we have neither the resources nor the authority to do the Federal Government's job as well.
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We request your assistance in four initiatives:
First, the local INS office has received some new help and it has made a difference in the number of illegal immigrants that the office has been able to process. Nevertheless, the INS still has many more cases that it can handle. Congress has authorized approximately 5,000 new INS personnel, most of whom are slated for the Border Patrol. This leaves the interior of our country unprotected. Since two out of three attempts to illegally cross the U.S. border are successful by the INS's own figures, it makes little sense to have the vast majority of INS personnel stationed there. Rather, a significant portion of these new agents should be spread among interior INS offices.
Second, there is a proposal to cross-deputize local police officers as INS officers. Let me emphasize that the Salt Lake County Commission does not desire the authority to arrest individuals for being here illegally. Rather, we ask that when an individual is brought to our jail on a criminal charge and it is then determined that he is an undocumented immigrant, we desire the authority to then assist the INS in transporting that person across state lines to an INS holding facility in Denver or Las Vegas. This will decrease the cells occupied by undocumented immigrants and allow us to retain and prosecute more of our local criminals.
Third, the U.S. Senate's Committee on Appropriations has reported out the fiscal 1999 funding bill for the U.S. Justice Department in which it was noted that a temporary holding facility for INS detainees should be constructed in Salt Lake City. Of the recommendations you hear today, I believe this is the most critical. The INS desperately needs a place in the Salt Lake City area in which it can hold undocumented immigrants for a few days until arrangements can be made for their removal. This facility must be built and anything you can do to assure this happens will be most appreciated. Again, this will reserve limited space in our jails for the detention and prosecution of our owner criminals.
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Fourth, please extend the COPS grant to include jail correctional officers. Thus far, the COPS grant has provided many new officers who are on the street arresting criminals and bringing them to the jail where the incarcerating authority, be it a county or a city, does not have the staff to process them. The fact that we are being inundated with criminal undocumented immigrants only exacerbates the problem. Please give consideration to this request.
In closing, please understand that we are grateful for all that you have done and we know that you have worked hard to ensure that Utah has the resources necessary to deal with what has become our number one crime problem. The public is well aware of this issue and is demanding action. We simply cannot accept open air drug markets and gun battles in our neighborhoods. The Federal Government must step up and fulfill its responsibility to address this most pressing problem in our community. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Callaghan follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARY CALLAGHAN, COMMISSIONER, SALT LAKE COUNTY COMMISSION
Chairman Smith, Congressman Cannon, and Committee Staff, welcome to Salt Lake City. I am Mary Callaghan, a member of the Salt Lake County Board of Commissioners and the Chair of the Salt Lake County Criminal Justice Advisory Committee. I come before you to share some of our grave concerns regarding the federal government's failure to fulfill its responsibility in removing criminal undocumented immigrants from our community. Over the past few years, a consistent statistic which has been very troublesome to us is the fact that approximately 80% of all felony drug arrests in Salt Lake City are of undocumented immigrants. Indeed, the percentage of undocumented immigrants being arrested on felony drug charges has increased from 47% of all arrests county wide in 1996 to 53% in 1997.
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There are many causes of this which I and my fellow panel members will address. Nevertheless, please be aware that despite Salt Lake County's and its 13 cities' recent efforts including 350 new jail beds, additional officers and equipment, the Salt Lake City number has remained at 80% since 1994 when it became apparent that we had a crisis on our hands. Attached are two pages listing Salt Lake County's efforts over the past three years to address this issue (attachment a). To have such a small percentage of our population who are here unlawfully committing so many serious crimes including homicide, attempted murder, drug sales, etc., is totally unacceptable.
Of equal concern is the fact that so far in 1998 we have had to release 500 other jail inmates who should have been detained but have been freed due to the federal consent decree which places a cap on the total number of detainees within the jail. If we were not holding 100 to 140 undocumented immigrants on a typical day, we would not be having this problem to this extent. As it is, we are spending 132,000,000 property tax dollars on a new jail in part to address these required releases. We absolutely cannot let undocumented immigrant drug dealers have free reign over our streets. We as local residents, cities, counties and the state are doing our part to address this problem. But, we have neither the resources nor the authority to do the federal government's job as well.
We request your assistance in four initiatives:
First, the local INS office has received some new help and it has made a difference in the number of illegal immigrants that the office has been able to process. Nevertheless, the INS still has many more cases than it can handle. Congress has authorized approximately 5,000 new INS personnel, most of whom are slated for the border patrol. This leaves the interior of our country unprotected. Since two out of three attempts to illegally cross the U.S. border are successful by the INS's own figures, it makes little sense to have the vast majority of INS personnel stationed there. Rather, a significant portion of those new agents should be spread among interior INS offices.
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Second, there is a proposal to cross deputize local police officers as INS officers. Let me emphasize that the Salt Lake County Commission does not desire the authority to arrest individuals for being here illegally. Rather, we ask that when an individual is brought to the jail on a criminal charge and it is determined that he is an undocumented immigrant, we desire the authority to then assist the INS in transporting that person across state lines to an INS holding facility in Denver or Las Vegas. This will decrease the cells occupied by undocumented immigrants and allow us to retain and prosecute more of our local criminals.
Third, the U.S. Senate's Committee on Appropriations has reported out the fiscal 1999 funding bill for the U.S. Justice Department in which it was noted that a temporary holding facility for INS detainees should be constructed in Salt Lake City (attachment b). Of the recommendations you will hear today, this is the most critical. The INS desperately needs a place in the Salt Lake City area in which it can hold undocumented immigrants for a few days until arrangements can be made for their removal. This facility must be built and anything you can do to ensure that happens will be most appreciated. Again, this will reserve limited jail space for the detention and prosecution of our own criminals.
Fourth, please extend the COPS grant to include jail correctional officers. Thus far, the COPS grant has provided many new officers who are on the street arresting criminals and bringing them to the jail where the incarcerating authority, be it a county or a city, does not have the staff to process them. The fact that we are being inundated with criminal undocumented immigrants only exacerbates the problem. Please give consideration to this request.
In closing, please understand that we are grateful for all that you have done and we know that you have worked hard to ensure that Utah has the resources necessary to deal with what has become our number one crime problem. The public is well aware of this issue and is demanding action. We simply cannot accept open air drug markets and gun battles in our neighborhoods. The federal government must step up and fulfill its responsibility to address this most pressing problem in our community. Thank you.
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Detention space shortfall.—As noted above, Utah has experienced increasing problems with illegal and criminal aliens both transiting and remaining in Utah. In particular, the lack of available jail space in Utah for INS detainees undercuts efforts by local police to intercept aliens. The INS is directed to designate Salt Lake City, UT, as a hub location for the criminal alien county jail removal program and to establish at Salt Lake City a temporary holding facility for criminal aliens. The INS is also directed to provide to the Committees on Appropriations reports on the following: (1) the feasibility of locating a permanent INS detention center at Salt Lake City, and (2) the resources and training needed to address the overall INS mission in Utah, with specific reference to detention space and the number and distribution of agents assigned to the State. The reports should be delivered to the Committees not later than January 31, 1999.(see footnote 1)
57232a.eps
57232b.eps
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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Commissioner Callaghan.
Sheriff Kennard.
STATEMENT OF AARON D. KENNARD, SHERIFF, SALT LAKE COUNTY, ACCOMPANIED BY CAPTAIN PAUL CUNNINGHAM, JAIL COMMANDER
Mr. KENNARD. Thank you, Chairman Smith.
First, let me, as the president of Utah's Sheriff's Association representing all 29 sheriffs, and the sixth vice president of the National Sheriff's Association representing all the sheriffs in the country, express our most heartfelt, deepest condolences and sympathies to you Congresspeople for the loss of two of your frontline officers. Any time that happens, it impacts all of us in law enforcement, as we are a family, and our condolences to you.
You have heard a great deal today about crime in our county. Commissioner Callaghan has fully and accurately stated our immense problem with illegal aliens who continue to pose a significant crime problem to our community, due to their drug dealing and other illegal activities.
As sheriff of Salt Lake County, I operate two jails, and I provide full police services for unincorporated Salt Lake County and several municipalities. I actively support the DEA Metro Narcotics Task Force, and I field a very productive Sheriff's Neighborhood Drug Task Force that focuses on drug dealing in our residential areas.
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Today, I offer you my personal testimony that one of our top crime problems here in Salt Lake valley is criminals who come to our valley and use their illegal and undocumented status to help cover their criminal enterprises, that includes selling drugs and committing violent crimes.
As we approach the turn of the millennium, we face new challenges that might significantly impact crime. We will host the 2002 Winter Olympics, and we face tremendous growth here in this valley. This will open even more potential to prey on our community. We must deal with current significant crime problems now so that they don't continue to impact us as we move forward.
Indeed, one of the significant crime problems that currently impacts our valley is that which is perpetrated by criminals who are in our country and in our community illegally. My jail system has felt the brunt of that impact more than any single police agency in the State.
We have not been able to fulfill our responsibility to incarcerate persons who are pending adjudication. This greatly frustrates the efforts of me and my staff. In order to help meet the challenges of our growing jail population, we have taken some creative steps to help us get by until our new jail is built.
We have used electronic monitoring. This program, along with creative conversion of administration jail space has allowed us to increase our net capacity by 350 additional beds.
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Still, the criminal aliens remain a serious burden on our jail population, and they are a continual threat to the community.
Next year, we will open a new 2,000-bed jail. Until that additional capacity comes on-line, I have identified four additional actions that might help relieve the crowding and better serve our community.
First, we successfully commit judges to accepting guilty pleas to drug charges and sentencing illegal aliens to jail, depending voluntary deportation. In order for this initiative to succeed, INS needs to remove illegals from my jails as quickly as possible. At any given time, I have more than 40 prisoners awaiting deportation.
Second, INS has a fingerprinting system which they use to track illegal aliens. It is independent of the fingerprint system WIN, the Western Identification Network, used in my jails. Since INS does not interface their system with WIN, it would benefit INS to install a personal identification device in our jail to identify illegal aliens that have not be entered in the WIN system. This would help prevent premature release of repeat offenders who have not been through my jail system.
Third, I believe the INS needs to station an agent at our metropolitan jail in order to maximize the efficiency of the other steps I have addressed. Certainly, this would significantly benefit our local law enforcement initiatives aimed at addressing crime by illegal aliens. But it would also complete a systemic solution to the problem of crime committed by illegal aliens now, and for years to come.
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Finally, I suggest the INS create several ''Disruption Teams'' consisting of six to eight agents. These teams would move into selective problem areas, identify criminal illegal aliens and their support systems, which also consist of illegal aliens. This would in turn disrupt and deport criminal aliens and their support system until the problem ceases to exist. The team would then move on to another problem area. I believe that such a problem-solving activity would be a very efficient and effective way for INS to deploy its resources here in our valley and around the Nation.
I believe that our firsthand experience here in Salt Lake valley with crime associated with criminal illegal aliens gives us the drive toward finding innovative ways to deal with such crime. Today, we ask the Immigration and Naturalization Service to become a more aggressive partner with us in attacking this level of crime in our valley. Thank you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kennard follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF AARON D. KENNARD, SHERIFF, SALT LAKE COUNTY
Chairman Smith, Congressman Cannon, and Committee Staff, I also welcome you to Salt Lake City. I am Sheriff Aaron D, Kennard, Salt Lake County Sheriff, and member of the Salt Lake County Criminal Justice Advisory Executive Committee. I am also President of the Utah Sheriff's Association, and 6th Vice President of the National Sheriff's Association.
You have heard a great deal today about crime in our county. Commissioner Callaghan has fully and accurately stated our immense problem with illegal aliens who continue to pose a significant crime problem to our communities, due to their drug dealing and other illegal activities.
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As Sheriff of Salt Lake County, I operate two jails, and I provide full police services for unincorporated Salt Lake County and several municipalities. I actively support the DEA Metropolitan Narcotics Task Force, and I field a very productive Sheriff's Neighborhood Drug Task Force that focuses on drug dealing in our residential areas.
Today, I offer you my personal testimony that one of our top crime problems here in the Salt Lake valley, is criminals who come to our valley and use their illegal and undocumented status, to help cover their criminal enterprises, that include selling drugs and committing violent crimes.
As we approach the turn of the millennium, we face new challenges that might significantly impact crime. We will host the 2002 Winter Olympics. And, we face tremendous growth. This will open even more potential for criminal predators to prey on our community. We must deal with current significant crime problems now so that they don't continue to impact us as we move forward.
Indeed, one of the significant crime problems that currently impacts our valley is that which is perpetrated by criminals who are in our country and our community illegally. My jail system has felt the brunt of that impact more than any single police agency.
We have not been able to fulfill our responsibility to incarcerate persons who are pending adjudication. This greatly frustrates the efforts of me and my staff. In order to help meet the challenges of our growing jail population, we have taken some creative steps to help us get by until our new jail is built.
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We have used electronic monitoring. This program, along with creative conversion of administration space to jail space has allowed us to increase our net capacity by three hundred-fifty additional beds.
Still, the criminal aliens remain a serious burden on our jail population, and they are a continual threat to the community.
Next year, we will open the new two-thousand bed jail. Until that additional capacity comes online, I have identified four additional actions that might help relieve the crowding and better serve the community.
First, we successfully convinced judges to start accepting guilty pleas to drug charges , and sentencing illegal aliens to jail, pending voluntary deportation. In order for this initiative to succeed, INS needs to remove illegals from my jails as quickly as possible. At any given time, I have more than forty prisoners awaiting deportation.
Second, INS has a fingerprinting system which they use to track illegal aliens. It is independent of the fingerprint system (Western Identification Network) used in my jails. Since INS does not interface their system with WIN, it would benefit INS to install a personal identification device in the jail to identify illegal aliens that have not been entered in the WIN system. This would help prevent premature release of repeat offenders who have not been through my jail system.
Third, I believe that INS needs to station an agent at our metropolitan jail in order to maximize the efficiency of the other steps that I addressed. Certainly, this would significantly benefit our local law enforcement initiatives aimed at addressing crime by illegal aliens. But it would also complete a systemic solution to the problem of crime committed by illegal aliens now, and for years to come.
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Finally, I suggest that the INS create several ''Disruption Teams'' consisting of six to eight agents. These teams would move into selected problem areas, identify criminal illegal aliens and their support systems, which also consists of illegal aliens. This would in turn disrupt and deport criminal aliens and their support system until the problem ceases to exist. The team would then move on to another problem area. I believe that such a problem solving activity would be a very efficient and effective way for INS to deploy its resources here in our valley, and around the nation.
I believe that our first hand experience here in the Salt Lake valley with crime associated with criminal illegal aliens gives us the drive toward finding innovative ways to deal with such crime. Today, we ask the Immigration and Naturalization Service to become a more aggressive partner with us in attacking this level of crime in our valley.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Let me thank you both for something else as well. This morning the commissioner and the sheriff gave Congressman Cannon and me a tour of the jail, and that was most informative.
What we saw and learned was helpful in a number of ways: we saw the excellent job that your representatives and your law enforcement officials are doing, but we also got a firsthand picture of the problem that we are discussing today.
The way this works is that Congressman Cannon and I will ask questions of the witnesses and they will respond. I will now recognize Congressman Cannon for his questions.
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Mr. CANNON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Sheriff, what percentage of felony level narcotics arrests are undocumented immigrants?
Mr. KENNARD. With Salt Lake City, they are reaching the 80 percent level. Throughout the entire county, it is now at 53 percent.
Mr. CANNON. Do you have a number of those per week or per month or for the year?
Mr. KENNARD. With me, I have my jail commander, Captain Paul Cunningham, and I would ask that you allow him to help answer questions if I do not have them in front of me.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Currently for 1997, it would be over a thousand felony arrests.
Mr. CANNON. Now you have worked under a consent decree. How many consent decree releases, or CDRs, occur every week?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. If I can, I can share some numbers with you that are from 1997, also 1998. Back in 1996, we peaked out over 3,600 CDR arrests. That dropped as we expanded the spaces, as the commissioner and sheriff have told you, with the 300 beds. So that dropped to a thousand last year, and we are running about the same pace this year.
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According to the numbers we have in 1997, we believe that approximately 400 illegal aliens were CDR.
Mr. CANNON. Would you mind, Sheriff, explaining briefly what CDR means?
Mr. KENNARD. CDR means consent decree release. We are under a Federal court order that we cannot exceed a specific number of population in the jail. Once we reach that cap, then we have to start kicking prisoners loose. We determine the number to go out by their threat to society.
Usually the people who are in jail for property crimes are the ones that go out, and the violent offenders don't go out. Drug dealing is considered a property crime, so that is basically what the CDR is.
Mr. CANNON. So the drug dealers are the first to go out?
Mr. KENNARD. Some of the first. And the cap that has been mentioned, the real problem—one of the big problems also includes the fact that we hold these illegals in jail. INS will put a hold on them.
And once we have disposed of all the local charges and we inform the INS that now they have to come get these people or we have to charge the INS, about two-thirds of the time, the INS simply says, Kick them loose, we can't deal with them. Sixty to 70 percent of the people are then released by the INS.
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Mr. CANNON. Meaning they go outside?
Mr. KENNARD. They go out.
And I will share with you another statistic, that probably 70 to 75, maybe as high as 80 percent of them, will reoffend.
Mr. CANNON. Meaning they come back?
Mr. KENNARD. They come back.
Mr. CANNON. Is it fair to say, or can you describe what is going on in the city, the fact that we don't have the authority with respect to kick these guys out, is that attractive for other people to come back in?
Mr. KENNARD. Absolutely. These people are coming here for various reasons: number one, criminal enterprise, to make money. The economy is such that they can make $1,000, $2,000, send it back to Mexico to take care of their family for months at a time.
They realize there are no jail beds here, there is no jail space. And the chances of them being prosecuted and locked up and out of business are very slim, and they know that.
Mr. CANNON. Is that the reason for your idea of which I think you called disruption teams?
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Mr. KENNARD. Yes, sir.
Mr. CANNON. We have become a target because we have become known as not having jail beds. If you bring a disruption team in, they start busting these guys and sending them off to the Federal system and word gets out, Don't go to Salt Lake City because you are going to go to jail and do hard time.
Mr. KENNARD. Well, either that or be deported, and that would be the idea for the disruption team, the INS people, to be proactive rather than reactive.
And the commissioner mentioned that we are working with you for cross-deputization. Let me reaffirm that I have no intention of cross-deputizing my deputies so they can enforce the INS laws. I have enough to do in Salt Lake County with the local laws. I have no intention of my people arresting people for illegal status.
My intention all along and continues to be if we have illegals in my jail and they have documentation to prove that they don't belong here and they need to be deported, the only thing I was asking for was documentation and cross-deputization to allow my deputies to assist the INS in deporting these people to Las Vegas or Denver or wherever.
Mr. CANNON. And documentation, I take it, comes down to in many cases just fingerprinting?
Mr. KENNARD. Yes. That is one of the forms that INS uses, yes, along with their entire form they have to fill out to prove that an individual is an illegal.
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Mr. CANNON. When we were at the jail, you mentioned something about illegal aliens sometimes having 20 aliases.
Mr. KENNARD. That is correct.
Mr. CANNON. So the fingerprinting system is actually pretty significant?
Mr. KENNARD. It is a significant portion of it, and we have ordered a new system. We have gone from 2 months, 2 weeks, hoping we can take it to 2 hours and hopefully, eventually, that we can identify any individual within 15 to 20 minutes.
Mr. CANNON. Let me ask Commissioner Callaghan, what is your sense of how the U.S. Attorney's Office has been doing in progressing in prosecuting cases of aggravated felonies.
Ms. CALLAGHAN. We have been most appreciative. We have seen more aggressive prosecution, we have seen and heard the benefits. We are most grateful for the additional U.S. attorneys that were sent to this region.
However, as was noted, a vast majority are still being released. And once they're released, the U.S. attorney can't prosecute, and that is where we ask for the holding facility, et cetera.
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Mr. CANNON. Would you tell us a little bit about how that holding facility would function? I take it you are talking about one near the airport. How would it work?
Ms. CALLAGHAN. Right. The airport was mentioned because of the ability to use the airplanes conveniently. We are not specific on its location, but if we have several hundred individuals using up space—and you saw this morning using up space in our jail, using up personnel and equipment, whereas we need those individuals for our own crime-solving resolutions—then we have another facility to put them in.
We don't need a high security building as our jail is. If we had another facility near the airport, then those individuals could be housed there while the INS could perform its requirements and then it would free up space in our jails for prosecution of our criminals.
Mr. CANNON. The sheriff talked briefly about the goal being deportation. Don't we want these criminals to do time so they really don't want to come back here? Some kind of punishment that really motivates them to stay away?
Mr. KENNARD. Well, yes and no. We would just as soon if they're here illegally that they be deported. But if they're committing crimes, yes, they should be paying the price, but it costs us to house them.
Once they are deported, if they come back again, then it is a felony and the U.S. attorney can then prosecute them for aggravated reentry, which makes them do some real hard time in Federal statute.
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Mr. CANNON. Okay. If I may, one more question. We have had some adjustment in the INS staffing patterns. How does that work and how does that affect the problem so far?
Ms. CALLAGHAN. I have seen some improvements. For instance, we have more use of the airplanes, buses, et cetera, but it is not sufficient. We still have significant holding time, and it is not significant so we have to release the individuals.
Mr. CANNON. That release is, as I recall the sheriff said, two-thirds of these holdings are released.
Mr. KENNARD. Were released, that is correct.
Mr. CANNON. I am sorry. I know I said one more question, but one more one more. If a person has a hold—is being held as an illegal alien and is released, and then he is caught doing criminal activity as an illegal alien, does that first release count toward the Federal felony or is that not a Federal felony?
Mr. KENNARD. It is my understanding that until he has been deported, he cannot be charged for felony aggravated reentry. You may have to ask that of the INS or U.S. attorney. That is my understanding, until they have been deported.
Again, many of them have 10, 20, 30 aliases and they will come in under a different name. And by the time we have put it all together and identified this, it is not a case that the U.S. attorney can prosecute.
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Mr. CANNON. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Commissioner, you made the valid point that there needs to be better cooperation among the local, State and Federal Governments.
You also made the valid point that it is not the local government's job to do some of the things that the local government is being required to do and also being required to pay for.
A good example of that is an expansion of the jail from 1,500 inmates to a little over 2,000 inmates. That expansion, I gather, is largely necessary because of the number of criminal aliens in the area, and yet those criminal aliens ought to be detained by the INS.
Ms. CALLAGHAN. Right. Our current jail will only hold 700 and we are opening a new one to hold 2,000, in addition to 350 beds that taxpayers paid for over the past 3 years. The new jail cost $132 million.
We can talk about it costs us several million to retrofit administration buildings for new jail beds; we have added new intake officers; additional help in substance abuse prevention and treatment; youth services; always divided and fulfilled all of our COPS grants, and then we supplied the equipment, et cetera. So county taxpayers are paying for this with their county tax dollars, property and sales.
And let's not just talk about the indirect costs, but I am more concerned about the effect on families. Once the drugs get started, it often becomes multigenerational and it is very difficult for drug treatment and expensive.
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I am very happy about this committee and to serve on it. And I am concerned when parents call me and say, My child found a dirty syringe on the school grounds or in our front yard. I am concerned when I see mothers torn from their children because they have been addicted to drugs. I want to stop the drug trade here, and that is the kind of costs we are talking about.
Mr. SMITH. You anticipated my next question, which was a question about the costs. And you just recounted how the costs are not just financial but are also personal and human, and I think that is a very, very good point.
I might add that if the INS was doing a better job at the root cause, making sure that illegal aliens were not coming into the country, you would not face such problems with criminal aliens.
Ms. CALLAGHAN. We don't want the drug trade here. We don't want to continue to be a market.
Mr. SMITH. What is happening unfortunately in Salt Lake, we are seeing occur across the country, which is that illegal aliens and drug-traffickers are no longer a border State problem.
I am from Texas. We used to think it was a regional problem, an isolated problem. But we are now getting reports from Utah or Arkansas or Georgia, we are getting more and more reports that criminal activity is being conducted by illegal aliens.
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Across the entire United States, about one-quarter of all Federal prisoners today are now illegal aliens.
If you want to do something immediately about the crime rates in America, if you want to do something about the crime rate in Salt Lake County, there is a very easy answer. And that is keeping track of who is coming into the country, why they are coming in, and how long they are going to be here. And doing a better job of getting to the root of the problem, by not allowing these individuals to come into the country to begin with.
But one-quarter of our crime problem in this country today is directly connected to illegal immigration problems.
Sheriff, in response to Congressman Cannon's questions, you mentioned some astounding figures that ought to catch everybody's attention. In the city, 80 percent of the felony drug arrests are arrests of criminal aliens; is that right?
Mr. KENNARD. That is correct. Eighty percent of those arrested in Salt Lake City total around 80 percent. And throughout the entire county, it averages around 50, 56 percent.
Mr. SMITH. What would be your estimate of the percentage of the total population that are illegal aliens, in the county or the city?
Mr. KENNARD. Probably 10 percent.
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Mr. SMITH. Ten percent are illegal aliens?
Mr. KENNARD. Or less—of the total population?
Mr. SMITH. Yes.
Mr. KENNARD. Oh, I am sorry. That would be—we are looking at under 1 percent.
Mr. SMITH. Under 1 percent of the population is committing 50 percent of the felony drug crimes in the county and 80 percent in the city?
Mr. KENNARD. That is correct.
Mr. SMITH. That shows you why we target those individuals, stopping them from getting into the country, and, if they come here and commit crimes, making sure they are apprehended and deported as quickly as possible.
The other astounding figure you mentioned was the recidivism rate, the percentage of people who, when released, go out and commit other crimes. Did you say 70 to 80 percent?
Mr. KENNARD. Yes, sir. I believe that is conservative. But the documentation and statistics we generate out of the jail is that 75 to 80 percent of these people reoffend and come back into the system.
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Mr. SMITH. Now, once again, why is it you are being forced to release these people back into the community?
Mr. KENNARD. Well, we have no room for them. And if we have to choose between a drug dealer and someone that has just committed an armed robbery and shot several people, one is an aggravated felony and deals with a property crime versus a crime against a person. We have to choose which is the biggest threat to society.
Mr. SMITH. And the solution, obviously, is to either not have those individuals here at all, or, if they do find a way to get here, to put them in jail or detain them in some way.
Now you all are adding to the current jail size, and then you are also building this new detention facility out by the airport; is that what you said?
Mr. KENNARD. We are not building. We are asking you, the Federal Government and the INS in a partnership——
Mr. SMITH. That is what you would like to see?
Mr. KENNARD.—to have a holding facility so that rather than release these people—and they may go out and reoffend in either selling drugs. Or it may escalate and they may get involved in an aggravated shoot-out or something in this nature where we do keep them. Now they are a big part of our expense. So we are asking Federal Government to look at that seriously.
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Mr. SMITH. I think that is part of our job, to help you with your solutions. I think you are pointing to exactly the right solution.
Mr. KENNARD. Thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Let me see if the Congressman has any more questions.
Mr. CANNON. I have a million questions, but given the time——
Mr. SMITH. We thank you both for your testimony, and, again, for the tour of the jail earlier.
Mr. SMITH. We will go to our second panel:
Mr. David J. Schwendiman, United States Attorney, District of Utah, U.S. Department of Justice; and Mr. Mark Reed, Regional Director, Immigration and Naturalization Service, accompanied by Mr. Michael Comfort, Acting District Director, Denver District Office, INS, and Mr. Meryl Rogers, Officer in Charge, Salt Lake City Suboffice, INS. We welcome you all and look forward to hearing your testimony.
We will begin with Mr. Schwendiman.
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STATEMENT OF DAVID J. SCHWENDIMAN, U.S. ATTORNEY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DISTRICT OF UTAH
Mr. SCHWENDIMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I am very happy to be here. I am sorry that it comes at a time of national grief. As the chief law enforcement officer, Federal law enforcement officer of the District, I ask that you take our condolences and convey our pride to the families of those folks when you go to the memorial ceremony tomorrow.
The goal of the Utah Federal Immigration Prosecution Project is to bring Federal resources to bear on the part of the crime problem in Utah that can be traced to those who come to the United States illegally, commit serious crimes, are convicted and deported as a result, and then come to Utah and continue criminal careers that threaten public safety.
The project that we have been working on was conceived as a way to interrupt the illegal reentry cycle that seems, at least, to be the norm for illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes here locally. Prosecuting qualified offenders for violations of 8 U.S.C. 1326(b) and enhancing their sentences by the use of 8 U.S.C. 1326(b)(2), the aggravated felon reentry provision, exposes these folks to up to 20 years in Federal prison. Successful prosecutions eliminate them as recurring threats to public safety whether in Utah or elsewhere. Once these folks are in Federal prison, they are no longer a burden on our overtaxed jails and prison.
Mark Vincent, whom the congressman knows, set up our project here in the district in September 1996. His work that year resulted in the indictment of 80 aggravated felon reentry cases. There is a chart here on my left, which you have a copy of in the testimony, that illustrates the numbers that we are talking about.
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Through September 1997, Mark indicted 115 additional such defendants. As a result of the June 1997 Crime Summit, hosted by Senator Hatch, the District of Utah was able to hire three additional Assistant United States attorneys, albeit for limited 14-month terms, to help Mark with the project. Elise Becker, Henri Sisneros, and Michele Mladejovsky started work at different times last year, but all were on board by March of this year.
From October 1997 through the end of last year, Mark and Elise indicted 79 defendants for a total of 194 in 1997. With all four attorneys working full time on the project in 1998, as of last Wednesday we had charged 201 defendants just this year. That brings the total since the inception of this project to 484 aggravated felon reentry prosecutions that we have done since we started this in September 1996. We estimate that we will do close to 400 of these cases before the end of the calendar year.
The average sentence in these cases is 60 months. Most of the 484 defendants we have done to date were found in the Utah State Prison and in Aaron Kennard's jail, and they were found there after they were convicted and sentenced for local crimes.
The number of defendants we have prosecuted is low in relation to the number of possible defendants who have been or who are now in State and local custody. The volume we are doing is a window on the breadth of the problem, but an examination of a case or two, a specific case or two will give you an idea of how serious the problem really is.
I want you to keep in mind that these are not people who came to Utah to make a better life for themselves or their families by working menial and tough jobs in agriculture or in the tourist trade or in whatever. These are hardened, violent, dangerous criminals who are as great a threat to the legal immigrant as they are to you and I.
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The first case involves a 36-year-old man who was sentenced this last July 1st. As an aggravated felon, he received a Federal sentence of 115 months. His long criminal history in the United States includes local convictions in California for possession of stolen property, battery on a police officer, driving under the influence, resisting arrest, hit-and-run resulting in death and manslaughter. He was convicted in Arizona for illegally reentering the country. He was deported to Mexico twice, once from California and again from Arizona. He has two driving-under-the-influence arrests and a reckless driving charge in Utah. He became part of our project when he came to our attention while serving a 180-day sentence in the Salt Lake County jail for driving under the influence.
The second case: in May this year another man received an 84-month Federal sentence for aggravated felon reentry. He was first deported to Mexico from California on January 27, 1995, after serving a 4-year California prison term for narcotics trafficking. In April 1995 he was convicted in Federal court in California and served a 24-month sentence for entering the country illegally. He was deported to Mexico from California on January 22, 1997.
His criminal record in California includes numerous convictions for narcotics trafficking. But of greatest interest, at least to me, is that almost a year to the day after he was deported in 1997, this defendant was arrested in Salt Lake City selling a twist of heroin to an undercover narcotics officer near Pioneer Park. I don't know whether you went to Pioneer Park this morning, if you did you know what the problems are there. This man came to our attention a few days later while he was in the Salt Lake County jail serving an 80-day sentence on that offense.
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These are not the worst, nor are they the least serious offenders. They are simply typical of the defendants we are prosecuting. They demonstrate the dangers these people pose to the community. They also illustrate why it is important to break the reentry cycle by identifying these people, prosecuting them, and putting them away under circumstances that make it impossible for them to be a problem here or elsewhere.
One of the interesting things we do in our program is we ask the defendants that will talk to us why they came to Utah. What we hear from the few of those that will talk suggests that many of our defendants came to Utah with the idea that law enforcement is overwhelmed by the immigration problem and has neither the will nor the resources to be much of a threat.
Even though almost all of our defendants are Mexican nationals, we have not singled out an ethnic or national group or people of one nationality for special treatment. That has not been the focus of this project. The thrust of the project has been simply to ensure public safety by identifying, prosecuting, and locking away those who pose the most significant and most serious threat to peace and well-being in this community. I have gone to leaders in the Mexican and Mexican-American communities to explain the program, field questions about what we are trying to do, and to calm the fears of citizens and legal immigrants that they will be unfairly or mistakenly caught up in our project.
I speak regularly with the Mexican Consul, Ms. Anacelia Perez de Meyer. I am proud to report that the district has received unqualified support from Ms. Meyer and from others with respect to this particular program, the Aggravated Felon Prosecution Reentry Prosecution Project. So far, the project is a success, but there are several things that need to happen in order for us to continue to do what we have done with success up to now.
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First, we must be able to keep the four attorneys that we have, make them permanent rather than just temporary.
Secondly, the IDENT system of fingerprint identification successfully used by the Service in other locations to rapidly determine alien status and immigration history, must be installed at as many strategic points as we can find in the Utah criminal justice system to allow the early and accurate identification of potential aggravated felon reentry defendants. The expanded use of IDENT, I believe, will eliminate the problems, delays, and missed opportunities caused by suspects who give false identities when they enter the system.
Third, the memorandum of understanding between local law enforcement and the Service must be acted upon quickly so that officers can be carefully selected, properly trained and then rapidly deployed to assist the Service in identifying criminal aliens.
As an adjunct to the aggravated felon reentry project, I agree that it is essential that the Service continue to process through deportation convicted felons and aggravated felons who are not eligible right now for prosecution as aggravated felon reentries.
Next, there must be support for contracting for and building additional jail space in the district, both to house defendants being prosecuted federally and for keeping those the Service must detain in order to process them for deportation. Nearly all of the Federal detainees now awaiting trial, sentencing or designation in the jails in use in this district, and those include Salt Lake County, Davis County, Tooele County and Wasatch County and also include Bannock County and Bingham County in Idaho, are in those jails because of the Utah Federal Immigration Prosecution Project.
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Imaginative management of the problem by Randy Anderson and his people at the U.S. Marshal's Office has helped relieve the pressure on any one particular jail, but it cannot succeed over time in the face of the increased pressure that will result from more and more defendants being held and fed into the system by our project. And these are people for whom release is no alternative. You cannot release these people and hope to get them back to prosecute.
The jail space issue, I hasten to say, is not a purely Federal problem. The Federal need for jail space is a direct result of what the Service and the United States Attorneys Office are doing to help the community address a very serious public safety issue. We need local and national understanding, support and assistance to be able to continue that effort.
The Service must continue to provide the enforcement agents necessary to fully implement our project as it was envisioned last year. You mentioned, I believe, the interior enforcement strategy that is being drafted by the Service. Well, the draft that I have seen encourages coordination with the United States attorneys to build a ''national prosecution program for criminal alien reentry after removal.'' In Utah, the program is already in place. The best way to achieve the Service's goals and objectives for interior enforcement in Utah is to fully staff and support the district's Federal immigration prosecution project.
Finally, a defendant who was recently interviewed told us that he came to Utah because he was told by people in Mexico that things were tougher in Utah now, but if he laid low for a year he could come here without worry. He was told that the authorities in Utah would eventually give up. The whole project would die in a year, they said. Well, I don't want that prediction to come true, and I need your help and local help in order to make that not come true.
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Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schwendiman follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID SCHWENDIMAN, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, DISTRICT OF UTAH, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
The goal of the Utah Federal Immigration Prosecution Project (FIPP) is to bring federal resources to bear on the part of the crime problem in Utah that can be traced to those who come to the United States illegally, commit serious crimes, are convicted and deported as a result, then come to Utah and continue criminal careers that threaten public safety.
The project was conceived as a way to interrupt the illegal reentry cycle that seems, at least, to be the norm for illegal immigrants convicted locally of serious offenses. Prosecuting qualified offenders for violations of 8 U.S.C. 1326(b) and enhancing their sentences by applying 8 U.S.C. 1326(b)(2), the aggravated felon reentry provision, exposes them to up to twenty years in federal prison. Successful prosecutions eliminate them as recurring threats to public safety whether in Utah or elsewhere. Once they are in federal prison they are no longer a burden on our overtaxed local jails and prisons.
Mark Vincent set up the project in September 1996. His work that year resulted in the indictment of 80 aggravated felon reentry cases. Through September 1997, Mark indicted 115 additional such defendants. As a result of the June 1997 Crime Summit hosted by Senator Hatch, the District of Utah was able to hire three additional Assistant United States Attorneys, albeit for temporary fourteen month terms, to help Mark with the project. Elise Becker, Henri Sisneros, and Michele Mladejovsky started work at different times in late 1997 and early 1998, but all were on board by March this year. From October 1997 through the end of last year, Mark and Elise indicted 79 defendants, for a total of 194 in 1997. With all four attorneys working full- time on the project in 1998, as of last Wednesday we had charged 201 defendants this year, bringing the total number since the inception of the program to 484. We will do close to 400 cases this year alone. The average sentence is 60 months.
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Most of the 484 defendants we have done to date were found in the Utah State Prison and in the Salt Lake County Jail after they were convicted and sentenced for state offenses.
The number of defendants who have been prosecuted is low in relation to the number of possible defendants who have been or who are now in state and local custody.
The volume we are doing is a window on the breadth of the problem, but a look at a specific case or two will give you a better feel for how serious the problem is. Keep in mind that these defendants are not people who came to Utah to make a better life for themselves or their families by working tough, menial jobs in the service, agricultural and tourist industries, although they may have followed or traveled to Utah with those who did. Instead, they are hardened, violent, dangerous criminals who are as great a threat to the hardworking, legal immigrant as they are to you and me.
The first case involves a 36 year old man who was sentenced on July 1. As an aggravated felon he received a federal sentence of 115 months. His long criminal history in the United States includes local convictions in California for possession of stolen property, battery on a police officer, driving under the influence, resisting arrest, hit and run resulting in death, and manslaughter. He was convicted in Arizona for illegally reentering the country. He was deported to Mexico twice; once from California and again from Arizona. He has two driving under the influence arrests and a reckless driving charge in Utah. He became part of the project when he came to our attention while serving a 180 day sentence in the Salt Lake County Jail for driving under the influence.
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In May this year, another man received an 84 month federal sentence for aggravated felon reentry. He was first deported to Mexico from California on January 27, 1995, after serving a four year California prison term for narcotics trafficking. In April 1995 he was convicted in federal court in California and served a twenty-four month sentence for entering the country illegally. He was deported to Mexico from California on January 22, 1997. His criminal record in California includes numerous narcotics convictions. Of greatest interest, however, is that almost a year to the day after he was deported in 1997, this defendant was arrested in Salt Lake City selling a twist of heroin to an undercover narcotics officer near Pioneer Park. He came to our attention a few days later while he was in the Salt Lake County Jail serving an 80 day sentence on that offense.
These are not the worst, nor are they the least serious offenders. They are simply typical of the defendants we are prosecuting. They demonstrate the dangers these people pose for the community. They illustrate why it is important to break the reentry cycle by identifying them, prosecuting them and putting them away.
We ask the defendants who will talk to us why they came to Utah. What we hear suggests many of our defendants came to Utah with the idea that law enforcement is overwhelmed by the immigration problem and has neither the will nor the resources to be much of a threat to them.
Even though almost all of our defendants are Mexican nationals, we have not singled out an ethnic or racial group or people of one nationality for special treatment. The thrust of the project has always been simply to ensure public safety by identifying, prosecuting and locking away those who pose the most significant threat to the peace and well-being of this community. I have gone to leaders in the Mexican and Mexican-American communities to explain the program, field questions about what we are trying to do, and to calm the fears of citizens and legal immigrants that they will be unfairly or mistakenly caught up in our project or harassed as a result. I speak regularly with the Mexican Consul, Ms. Anacelia Perez de Meyer. I am proud to report that the District has received unqualified support for the project from these groups and their representatives.
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So far, the project is a success. In order to sustain what we've started, however, several things must occur.
We must be able to convert our Special Assistant United States Attorney and our three temporary Assistant United States Attorneys to permanent positions.
The IDENT system of fingerprint identification successfully used by the Service in other locations to quickly determine alien status and immigration history must be installed at as many strategic points in Utah as possible to allow the early and accurate identification of potential aggravated felon reentry defendants who are in the state criminal justice system. The expanded use of IDENT will eliminate the problems, delays and missed opportunities caused by suspects who give false identities when they enter the system.
The Memorandum of Understanding between local law enforcement and the Service must be acted upon quickly so that officers can be carefully selected, properly trained and then rapidly deployed to assist the Service in identifying criminal aliens, aggravated felons and candidates for prosecution as aggravated felon reentries.
As an adjunct to the project it is essential that the Service continue to process for deportation convicted felons and aggravated felons who are not eligible for prosecution as aggravated felon reentries.
There must be support for contracting for and building additional jail space in the District, both to house defendants being prosecuted federally and for keeping those the Service must detain in order to process them for deportation. Nearly all of the federal detainees now awaiting trial, sentencing or designation in the jails in use by the District, including those in Salt Lake County, Davis County, Tooele County, and Wasatch County, and in Bannock County and the Bingham County in Idaho, are there because of the District's federal immigration prosecution project. Imaginative management of the problem created by the limited space available to house federal detainees is working, but it cannot succeed over time in the face of the increased pressure that will result from more and more defendants being fed into the system by the project, people for whom release is not an alternative. The jail space issue is not a purely federal problem. The federal need for jail space is a direct result of what the Service and the United States Attorneys Office are doing to help the community address a very serious public safety issue. We need local and national understanding, support and assistance to be able to continue that effort.
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The Service must provide the enforcement agents necessary to fully implement the project as it was envisioned at the time of the Crime Summit. The Interior Enforcement Strategy drafted by the Service encourages coordination with United States Attorneys to build a ''national prosecution program for criminal alien reentry after removal.'' In Utah, the program is already in place. The best way to achieve the Service's goals and objectives for interior enforcement in Utah is to fully staff and support the District's federal immigration prosecution project.
A defendant who was recently interviewed told us he came to Utah because he was told by people in Mexico that things were tougher in Utah, but if he laid low for a year he could come here without worry. He was told the authorities in Utah would eventually give up. The whole project would die in a year, they said. I don't want that prediction to come true. We need your help if that is to be kept from happening.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Mr. Reed.
STATEMENT OF MARK REED, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, DALLAS, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
Mr. REED. Mr. Chairman, thank you for having me here today. It is a privilege and an honor. I have a written statement that I would like to submit for the record.
Mr. SMITH. Without an objection, we will make that a part of the record.
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Mr. REED. I would like to hit some of the high points on it. From all the dialogue we have had this morning, I am not going to deviate from the statement, but try to address only a couple of the issues from the important parts of the discussion.
Just so you know who is sitting at the table, I am the regional director for the Immigration Service. I have operational responsibilities for field offices in 18 States to include both the Border Patrol and interior stations.
Mike Comfort is our acting district director in Denver, who is responsible for not only Denver but Salt Lake City. He has operational responsibilities for Utah and Colorado.
Meryl Rogers is the OIC here in Salt Lake City, who has been detailed into the region to help us work out some of these very issues that we are talking about today.
I would like to take a moment and frame some of the issues here, if I may, in terms of what is happening. I am here to talk about criminal aliens. Before I do so, I would like to build up to the issue.
We have a threat that has corridors going into the interior of the United States of America that have been in place for decades. It has taken us a long time to build the mess we have today. It is going to take us a while to get out of it.
Most of the people that are passing through this community are people destined to work sites. The great majority of these people are—except for the fact that they have violated our immigration laws—are here to find work. They are not criminal aliens.
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There is such a huge population of undocumented aliens in the United States now that even when a small percentage engage in criminal conduct, it becomes intolerable.
We are very busy at the border doing one part of an overall strategy. We have found what does not work is to pepper scarce resources throughout a broad regional area. That has no impact. We can show from past experience that that does not work.
We are attempting to gain control of certain parts of our border in a very measured way, and then grow off of that, and then go on and deny another area of terrain.
We are not making any representations to anybody that we are stopping the flow of undocumented workers in the United States of America. We are telling you that in time we are going to have a border that has the proper resources and integrity to become a significant deterrent to that.
And that has come about, Mr. Chairman, much through your guidance, as well as the interior enforcement strategy where we are now going.
We need to establish removal corridors in this United States. The alien smugglers have smuggling corridors that have been set up for decades.
There are networks in place to smuggle people from any part along the Mexican border to any place in the United States. It is an extensive network that has been in place for a long, long time. We need to work on destroying those networks.
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At the same time, we need to start setting up removal corridors that we can use when we detect people unlawfully in the country, we can get them out of the country as expeditiously as possible.
This is a community problem. This is something that has happened to our nation over time. It has to do with messages. The messages to Mexico and the other countries that seem to be in the limelight right now is ''it is okay to come to the United States.'' ''It is okay to seek work in the United States.'' ''It is okay to be here.''
And these people are really confused, if you will sit down and talk to them, they ask ''what the heck is going on here.'' ''Do you want me here or don't you want me here?'' The employer says, ''yes''; the Immigration Service says, ''no.''
We need to work on this in the community to help sort out that message so we are speaking of the same tongue, federally, locally, and from the State levels.
This is national in scope. I realize that communities tend to react to what is going on within their communities, but I would ask us not to look at this as just an isolated area in small communities. All this stuff is integrated and interrelated to other schemes that we need to come up with a viable interior immigration strategy.
In terms of criminal aliens, which is really—I agree with this committee and I agree with the people of the community—our number one priority. The sheriff has spoken with great wisdom this morning. I endorse virtually everything that he has said, and it is really the backbone of where we are trying to go.
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Before I came to this post in Dallas, I was a district director in San Diego. And, in 1995, I had the occasion of having the Attorney General come and visit us. She pulled in all the law enforcement leaders in the community as well as the Federal issue agencies, and she left us with this—and this is the Immigration Services interior enforcement strategy as it relates to criminal aliens.
Let me quote her: ''My dream is to develop a link with State and local authorities at jails and police departments across the country so that we recognize as the people are coming into the system what their status is and that we take appropriate steps. There are going to be some people that we want to imprison and some that we want to deport immediately. It is important that we develop a partnership with State and local authorities to undertake that from the beginning.''
I think you heard the sheriff say something very similar to that. Our strategy for criminal aliens is fourfold, basically. We are in the process of trying to develop that and the infrastructure built behind that as we speak. We have been working on this for the last few months.
Our first goal in the central region, to include all 18 States, is to identify every alien that is arrested by a State and local authority in the entire region at the time of arrest. Once we have identified that individual, it is imperative that we engage in a conversation with the local and State authorities to arrange for some prosecution strategy.
Does that person get prosecuted by the district attorney and/or does that person get prosecuted by the U.S. attorney? Or would it be better from an overall perspective, as the sheriff spoke of a couple of times, to simply get that person removed from the United States and set that person up for a felony criminal prosecution should they reenter the United States?
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Great thought process. He is right on the button. And then we have to get them removed expeditiously.
Those are really process issues. Those are processes of identifying people, getting them apprehended, putting them in the right system and getting them out of the United States.
But, again, going back again to what the sheriff spoke of, the measurement of success in this is, are they going to come back to the community?
That is where the community engages. That is when the community goes out and says, ''If you come back into this community, you are a felon just by being in this community and you will be arrested. There is a certainty of your arrest if you come back to this community. You will be arrested and the United States attorney will prosecute you as a felon. You will be incarcerated and you will be removed again.''
The enforcement will continue to mount. We do not have to wait for them to be a recidivist. All we have to do is wait for them to come back into the community. The message needs to be strong. It will not be tolerated in these given communities.
Between the partnerships with the local, State police departments, between the District Attorney and U.S. attorney and the Federal Government, we can send a very, very strong message and we can deal with this criminal alien problem.
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There is a lot of infrastructure that goes behind that. And, again, as the commissioner points out, detention and the capability—the capacity to actually detain these people and move them through the system is a heck of a challenge, but it is doable. It is especially doable if we have the communities buying into this—delegation of authority.
If we have got local law enforcement agencies that are willing to transport people to locations where we can set up hub sites, where we can build infrastructures around to arrange for formal removal out of the United States, we can do this. We cannot do it alone.
There are only about—and these are approximations—just for purposes of trying to look at this thing from a large perspective, we only have about 2,000 special agents in the United States. That includes some assigned to the border dealing with smuggling operations.
We have responsibilities outside of criminal aliens. Although criminal aliens is number one, we still have smugglers, we still have fraud. We still have some more enforcement issues we need to take care of.
We estimate that we have around five million people in the United States. We can't go get them all. We cannot do it. Even if we tried to station an immigration officer in every county jail 7 days a week 24 hours a day, we don't have enough people. We cannot do that.
Just for Utah, we estimate that it would take nearly 200 special agents to put a special agent in every one of your county jails 7 days a week 24 hours a day. We can't do it.
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[The prepared statement of Mr. Reed follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARK REED, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, CENTRAL REGION, IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to speak today. I am the Regional Director for the INS Central Region, and have operational responsibility for all INS activities in 18 states, including Utah, which is part of the INS Denver District. I am here to address the problem of criminal aliens in the state of Utah, and more importantly, steps we have taken and will take to meet those problems.
As you are well aware, the presence of criminal aliens seriously erodes the quality of life in American cities. Drug trafficking, the production and sale of fraudulent documents and alien smuggling are just some of the enterprises our cities can do without. I know I don't have to convince you that criminal aliens are a serious problem in Utah.
These are the responsibilities of the INS, as I see them, concerning criminal aliens in Utah:
First: apprehension and identification. The challenge is to find and arrest criminal aliens in the community or passing through the state, as well as identify those already in the criminal justice system.
Second: detention. There must be a secure place to hold criminals while due process takes place and while transportation is arranged.
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Third: removal. There must be an effective system for placing criminals outside the boundaries of our country.
Finally, deterrence. Once removed, criminals must have a strong aversion to returning to our communities.
The Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Doris Meissner, has made the removal of criminal aliens, particularly those who have been convicted of an aggravated felony, a high priority.
Nationally, the number of criminal aliens the INS removes has increased dramatically in the past few years. In the first six months of this fiscal year, 26,957 criminal aliens were removed from the U.S., up 12 percent from the same time last fiscal year.
Allow me to review the steps the INS has taken in the past to address the criminal alien issue in Utah, and outline additional steps we plan for the future.
APPREHENSION
First let's look at the apprehension of criminal aliens by the Salt Lake City INS office. By ''apprehensions'' I mean those aliens who were directly arrested by INS as well as those who were turned over to the INS by the criminal justice system and other agencies. In fiscal year 1996, the Salt Lake City INS office apprehended 564 criminal aliens. In fiscal year 1997, the total was 810. During the first nine months of fiscal year 1998, 924 criminal aliens have been taken into custody. At the current pace, the office here will likely exceed 1,200 apprehensions this fiscal year.
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In March 1998 the entire state of Utah was given access to INS' Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC). Over 50 hours of training were conducted statewide for Utah enforcement personnel. The LESC now gives them immediate access to INS information on foreign-born individuals under investigation or arrest.
The INS is a member of the city's Pioneer Park Drug Task Force. An INS bike patrol agent works closely with other law enforcement agencies to apprehend illegal aliens—many of whom are criminals—in Salt Lake City. I understand that the work of the task force has led to a reduction of criminal activity in Pioneer Park, and that the task force is now attacking similar problems in other areas of the city.
Our agents also work inside the state prison in Draper, Utah, to identify and track aliens who have been arrested for crimes. The agents place ''detainers'' on the aliens so that the INS takes them into custody when they are released. Other incarceration facilities around the state frequently notify the INS about aliens they encounter. Resource limitations do not allow us to respond to all requests to pick up aliens. We do, however, give particular attention to calls involving criminals.
In addition, our agents work throughout the state with other local, county, state and federal law enforcement officials on specific operations that involve aliens or immigration law violations. For example, we are developing plans that will increase our effectiveness in apprehending criminal aliens.
Law enforcement agencies in St. George and Cedar City, Utah, have requested a greater INS presence in the southern part of the state. The INS Denver District and the Havre, Montana, Border Patrol Sector have worked to address the issue of large numbers of illegal aliens being smuggled through the area. These joint road interdiction operations have resulted in the apprehension of large numbers of illegal aliens.
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The INS will continue to conduct periodic road and worksite operations, and will consider temporarily stationing special agents in southern Utah to ensure that all criminal aliens in jails are identified and removed.
We are excited about the upcoming arrival of video conferencing between INS and area jails as a way of identifying, processing, and removing criminal aliens much more effectively. The interviews will be done remotely, using computer and video equipment provided by the INS. Not only will we be able to identify a higher number of criminals, our agents will spend less time traveling around the state interviewing inmates, and will spend more time on other enforcement activities. Video conferencing has already proved to be very successful in other areas of the country.
We hope to enroll Washington County Jail near St. George and Utah County Jail in Provo in the initial phase of video conferencing. The new Salt Lake County Jail is scheduled to be completed during the summer of 1999. Once built, we expect to install video conferencing there in cooperation with the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department.
INS will work with southern Utah law enforcement agencies to implement video conferencing in jails and prisons there.
DETENTION
After apprehending criminal aliens, the issue becomes detention. My view is that detention should be as brief and as limited as possible, as resources are better spent in other areas of the removal process. Still, as you know, detention space is a continuing challenge to the Salt Lake City INS office, though the situation has improved over the past year.
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Currently, the INS has up to 45 detention beds available, scattered along the Wasatch front area. These spaces depend on inmate levels at the various facilities. Because of the shortage of local bedspace, the INS is compelled to look throughout the state for other options. We are currently using the Wackenhut facility in Aurora, Colorado, to house detainees until more beds become available. There is potential for additional detention space in the region, however.
Davis County is building a jail facility; when it is completed in December of this year, we will have 40 additional beds available to house our detainees.
The Washington County Purgatory Detention Center in Hurricane, Utah, has been suggested as a detention site. The facility is 300 miles from Salt Lake City, however, a distance that renders it too far to use as detention space.
The possibility of building a 150-bed ''Temporary Overnight Staging Facility'' for the INS in the Salt Lake City area is currently under analysis by the Corps of Engineers. Their report is expected sometime next month. It will consider building and operating costs, whether our workload will support such a facility, transportation needs, staffing requirements, INS priorities, and alternatives. We will review the results of the study when it is finished and make a determination on the facility then.
REMOVALS
Removing criminal aliens is the next consideration. The Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System (JPATS), a federal prisoner aircraft transport service under the management of the U.S. Marshals Service, has been and will continue to remove aliens from Utah. In addition, ground transportation is used to move aliens from the Salt Lake City area to other INS facilities, or remove them from the country.
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Within the past year, the Utah INS office has received four new maxi-vans and one new bus to assist in the transportation and removal of aliens. The local system for alien removal typically functions well for the current needs of the Utah INS.
DETERRENCE
The final step in the criminal alien removal system is deterrence. Without meaningful deterrence, criminals will re-establish themselves in our communities. New laws, along with greater cooperation among U.S. enforcement entities, have given teeth to the concept of deterrence. The Salt Lake City office has received outstanding support from Acting U.S. Attorney David Schwendiman in the form of prosecuting aggravated felons who re-enter the U.S. after removal. We expect to continue the same fine working relationship with U.S. Attorney designate Paul Warner. Aliens successfully prosecuted serve their time in federal prisons, relieving Utah of the jail space burden.
During fiscal year 1996, the U.S. Attorney's office criminally prosecuted 80 aliens for re-entry. In fiscal year 1997, the office prosecuted 152 aliens who re-entered. Through July 22 of this fiscal year, 281 have been prosecuted. That's a 184 per cent increase so far, with more than two months remaining in the fiscal year.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The state of Utah faces some real immigration challenges. We undoubtedly have a distance to go in addressing them, but I'd like to note some areas of progress, made possible through the work and cooperation of Congress, the Administration, the Department of Justice, local elected officials and law enforcement authorities, and of course, the local INS staff.
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The INS and the Salt Lake City Police Department will officially sign a memorandum of understanding next month that will initiate a ground-breaking pilot project that will delegate authority to the local PD to perform certain immigration officer functions. The immigration law passed in 1996 cleared the way for this concept, and the Attorney General designated Salt Lake City as the testing ground. This authority should be another effective tool to keep criminal aliens off the streets.
Earlier this year, Utah was put on-line with the Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC), which provides local and state law enforcement agencies with access to INS indices for the purpose of identifying criminal aliens for removal from the U.S.
Shortly after last year's crime summit here in Utah, the city began getting weekly flights by the Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System (JPATS). These flights have been an enormous help in moving criminals out of the state quickly.
Several vehicles were added to the local INS fleet to aid in the removal of aliens. Last fall the office received four large vans that hold 13 persons each, and recently a bus with a 51-person capacity was acquired.
Three additional federal prosecutors were assigned to the U.S. Attorney's office to handle INS narcotics-related matters.
Three additional INS enforcement agents were added to the Salt Lake City INS office during the past year. Since 1994, the office has grown by 15 positions.
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While on the subject, I'd like to give you an update on the local INS vacancy situation. The Salt Lake City Suboffice has a total of 48 positions. Currently, two of those positions are vacant, though we are aggressively working to fill them.
Deportation Branch: 14 positions; no vacancies. Two employees, a Deportation Officer and a Docket Clerk, recently entered on duty. Two other recently hired employees are awaiting security clearances.
Examinations Branch: 16 positions; 2 vacancies.
Investigations Branch: 13 positions; no vacancies. A criminal investigator recently entered on duty.
LONG-TERM ENFORCEMENT STRATEGIES
For a few moments I'd like to broaden the discussion to give you a glimpse of what we are putting in place as a central region interior enforcement strategy.
There are currently three teams, made up of top central region INS managers, developing operational plans for what I see as our primary interior enforcement targets. They are: (1) removing criminal aliens (2) shutting down smuggling corridors, and (3) reducing the number of illegal aliens in the workplace.
Allow me to summarize these target areas.
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Removal of Criminal Aliens
Aliens who commit crimes erode the quality of life in our communities. The INS routinely identifies criminal aliens in the state and federal criminal justice system, but those who enter the system on a local or county level are frequently missed.
Our goal is to set up a system to enable us to identify these criminal aliens for the purpose of removal. Then, we will aggressively pursue and prosecute criminal aliens who re-enter the U.S. after removal.
A 24-hour Command Center is now being established in the Chicago INS office. The Command Center will provide local and county jails with 24-hour access to INS, with the ability to remotely conduct record checks, interviews and processing.
The Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) will be able to refer cases to the INS command center if an alien appears amenable to removal by the INS.
In addition, the INS will expand the use of video conferencing equipment in local and county jails.
Shutting down smuggling corridors
Smugglers use numerous interstate corridors to transport illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S. In addition to the obvious problem of a rising illegal population, the smugglers use vehicles that are often unsafe, endangering the lives of the aliens and the general public.
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We will begin in Nebraska, by deterring alien smugglers from using the stretch of Interstate 80 that crosses that state. By developing partnerships with local, state and county law enforcement agencies along this corridor, while improving our responsiveness to their calls for assistance when they stop suspected smugglers, we will force these criminals to use other routes.
Once smuggling on I-80 in Nebraska has dried up and a maintenance system is in place, the concept will be systematically expanded to other states and other corridors.
The Command Center I mentioned earlier will also support our efforts to halt smuggling. The Center will provide 24-hour telephonic support to law enforcement agencies in a number of states who encounter suspected smuggling loads. This will enable INS to work with these agencies to determine the disposition of aliens and, more importantly, to quickly identify criminal aliens for removal.
Reducing the number of illegal aliens in the workplace
Employment continues to be the magnet that draws illegal aliens into the interior of the United States. While we will continue to remove unauthorized workers from the workplace, it has become clear that we must develop new strategies, especially for industries that historically have attracted large numbers of illegal aliens.
We chose meatpacking plants in the midwest as a starting point, since illegal aliens make up approximately 25 percent of the industry's workforce. Communities surrounding meatpacking plants continue to experience problems that accompany the illegal population, including crime and burdened social services.
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Our goal is to reduce the number of unauthorized workers in the meat-packing industry by providing industry managers with fast and frequent employment eligibility checks.
INS will establish an ''employment eligibility clearing house.'' INS will obtain copies of forms I-9 (employment eligibility verification) for employees of meat packing plants, which will be forwarded to the clearing house location or locations. There, working in cooperation with other agencies, staff will verify employment eligibility for all employees.
The INS will generate a list for each plant, indicating which employees' work authorization checks out, and which need to be interviewed by INS. This process will be repeated on a frequent basis, ''freezing out'' unauthorized workers and enabling plant managers to stabilize their workforce.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I want to thank you again for asking me to testify here today. It is clear that we have met many challenges posed by criminal alien activity in Utah. It is also clear that we have some distance to go. I appreciate the work you and the others in this room have put forth in looking for solutions. I look forward to meeting future challenges as partners. I will now be happy to answer any questions.
Mr. CANNON. Can I ask a question?
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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Reed. We will recognize Congressman Cannon.
Mr. REED. You can read my statement. There is actually a lot more good information.
Mr. CANNON. I am actually concerned about the chairman, who has a plane to catch.
Do you have statements you need to make?
Mr. COMFORT. No.
Mr. CANNON. So you are here to help us with the questions.
This has been very enlightening. Let me just ask Mr. Schwendiman a little bit about some distinctions here.
Your project deals with criminals—many of these very, very bad, vicious and hard people—who have reentered. They have already been deported once.
Mr. SCHWENDIMAN. That is right.
Mr. CANNON. You don't have a reentry case unless they have been deported. Would you distinguish between that kind of reentry case and the deportation case, and the elements of the crime charged, what you have to do to prove it.
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Mr. SCHENDIMAN. Sure. Very simply, a person who reenters the United States after having been convicted of a serious aggravated felony—and those are defined in the code—we have chosen to speak about three: violent crime, serious property crime, and narcotics offenses. But there is a host of those crimes that define an aggravated felony.
If a person is convicted of an aggravated felony, is deported, comes back to the United States, that person is an aggravated felon reentry, and we prosecute that person as an aggravated felon reentry.
Now, if a person is simply convicted of a crime, not necessarily one of the aggravated felonies—a misdemeanor, for example—and is deported subsequent to that because they were here illegally and they come back, we would not necessarily have an aggravated felon reentry case.
Mr. CANNON. Okay. But what does it take to deport a person who is here illegally?
Mr. SCHENDIMAN. In order to deport someone that is here illegally, you just have to prove they are not a citizen of the United States, they are here without permission, without authority.
Mr. CANNON. How does burden of proof work? How much of the burden does the defendant have to show that he is——
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Mr. SCHWENDIMAN. I think Mark is probably in a better position to tell you what it takes to get deported.
Mr. CANNON. If a person is deported once and reenters, what are the penalties you have against them? What penalties are available?
Mr. SCHENDIMAN. A person who is deported and reenters, it depends on their status. But, generally, 2 years is the maximum punishment they can receive for being prosecuted for reentering, simply reentering.
Mr. CANNON. But if you have someone that has been deported and comes back and back—not by your definition an aggravated criminal reentry—he is now just a reentry and he comes and commits some sort of felony, depending on what your resources are, then do you see that person?
Mr. SCHENDIMAN. No. We will see them if they have committed an aggravated felon reentry—if they are an aggravated felon reentry, but we don't ordinarily see them under the other circumstances. Now we have prosecuted cases where people have come back after being deported, and have been caught in an act that is dangerous to the community.
The person who threatened Judge Valdez was brought to our attention and we prosecuted that person for felony reentry. The person who was prosecuted is serving 18 months, I believe, on that offense.
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Mr. CANNON. Mr. Reed, I suppose the burden comes down to—you talked about strategy of doing this. The resources required for a criminal—an aggravated criminal reentry prosecution—are pretty terrific, are they not? You want to do a total of about 400 over a 3-year period?
Mr. REED. Actually, we will do probably 400 just this year. We have done 484 so far since September 1996.
Mr. CANNON. And that ties up four of your prosecutors?
Mr. REED. Yes.
Mr. CANNON. That is actually pretty good for those four.
Mr. REED. Yes.
Mr. CANNON. But still we have this much, much bigger problem. The sheriff is talking about just deporting them on the assumption that a deportation means an easier dealing with the people in the future. What is going to happen in the mind of people who want to come to America to commit crimes so they decide this is the—there are better ways to make a criminal life elsewhere?
Mr. SCHENDIMAN. We are already seeing this to some extent, a by-product of having done so many of these people this way already. We are getter word back in some cases that this is a bit scarier place to come than they might have thought before.
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I have talked to the first assistant, Howard Slot, in Nevada, who has been real interested in what we are doing. And they are going to start doing what we are doing because they are seeing the same sort of numbers in their jails. What will happen is we will chase them all from here and they will go someplace else unless we have got an across-the-board strategy.
Mr. REED. If they are deported, they are amenable to criminal prosecution. That is part of the infrastructure we need to set up to be sure that they can do that. I am speaking totally out of turn here, but it is probably one of the more simple felony prosecutions available.
Mr. CANNON. Reentry?
Mr. REED. Reentry. These people are felons. Some of them are aggravated felons, some of them are just felons. But, nevertheless, it is a felony prosecution. What I would ask you to think about is what is the cost if we don't do this? The numbers will continue to escalate.
The idea of this is to go in, change the message, set up a deterrent, and then criminals will understand you don't come to Salt Lake City. If you do, you are going to be arrested. There is a certainty of arrest, and they won't be there. The success is to not have to prosecute, so it is going to take some time. It is not easily done, but it is a concept and I think it is a workable concept.
I have got to say one other thing. The sheriff hit right on it, again, this disruption stuff. We should not be confining our special agents in jail. We should have them out on the street with the sheriff looking for people that shouldn't be there.
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Mr. CANNON. There are a lot more questions.
Mr. SMITH. Let me follow up on Congressman Cannon's questions and your answers. You both mentioned in your testimony that, unfortunately, many illegal aliens intend to commit crimes, and that, if they get to Salt Lake, they may or may not be prosecuted. If they are prosecuted, they probably won't do time, they will probably be released.
We heard the sheriff say awhile ago that 75 to 80 percent are released. It doesn't take long, I would think, for the word to get out there, that the odds are with you. And from the criminal's point of view, the rewards outweigh the odds of being punished.
It seems to me that the first message for us to send goes to that first chart, Mr. Schwendiman, that you put up there, which is the number of prosecutions increasing.
As Mr. Reed just said, when that word gets out there, you might expect the prosecutions to go down. That does not mean you are not doing your job. In some sense, that might mean you are being successful, assuming there are fewer people to be prosecuted. So I think that is one good point and something for us to be aware of.
The other point, though, is that if all we are doing is either putting more criminal aliens in jail or sending them to somewhere else in the country, we are really not doing our job, and you are not helping our friends in the law enforcement business.
The root of the problem is still the border. And until we deter illegal aliens from even coming into the country, we are never really going to solve that problem.
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Mr. Reed, the INS across the board is only succeeding in deporting less than half of all the criminal aliens who are apprehended. Why is that so low and how do we get it up?
Mr. REED. I can't validate your statistic there, but I do agree that we are not——
Mr. SMITH. It is about a third that are being deported, I understand.
Mr. REED. So I should have gone for the half.
Mr. SMITH. Take the half. How do we get it to 100 percent?
Mr. REED. I think what we are talking about is doing these types of things. We certainly have not been approaching this the right way. The way we have been approaching this is very resource and manpower intensive. We don't have the resources.
In many cases, we don't have the right relationship set up with State and local governments to allow this to happen. We don't have the appropriate detention strategy in place.
Mr. SMITH. It is my understanding that the INS deports 90,000 to 100,000 people a year, most of whom are criminal aliens; is that correct?
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Mr. REED. Yes, sir.
Mr. SMITH. Okay. And yet we conservatively estimate that we have got about 300,000 people coming into the country illegally each year; is that also correct?
Mr. REED. Yes. I will even take it a step farther than that. I will tell you what is happening to us because we don't have the appropriate relationships set up in the communities. I used to work in San Diego. I am going to have to insert some of this California stuff because I think it tells a good story.
In southern California, we have got a tremendous system set up to identify criminals in the state penal system and we get them removed. They are all aggravated felons. They are bad guys. These people are removed into Mexico.
These are individuals, for a great part, who came to the United States legally when they were young people. They have grown up in a world of crime. They are bad people. The only thing they know is home back in the hood. They will go out the door through removal, but they will come back in claiming to be a U.S. citizen.
They are very difficult to detect because they speak English as you and I do. They went to school in the schools we went to. They were raised in the United States of America, and they are coming back home, back to their neighborhoods, and they are back committing the crimes, which is probably just like the sheriff said.
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We have not taken the next step. The next step is the deterrent step. We have not got there yet because we have got our people in jail. We are doing the first part of it better, identifying people, but we have got to get our people away from that and let technology help us with it. We have got to get our people out in the street and——
Mr. SMITH. But the people you just described, I gather, are here legally; is that the case?
Mr. REED. No. Once they commit a crime, they are not.
Mr. SMITH. They are in legal status or illegal status? When you say they grew up here, they went to school here, they were born here, I presume they are citizens.
Mr. REED. A lot of these people started out with a lawful status at some point in time, and at some subsequent point in time because of their criminal activity, that lawful status is taken away and they are now undocumented.
Mr. SMITH. I understand. So the problem is not just with illegal immigrants, but also with legal immigrants in that case?
Mr. REED. In that case.
Mr. SMITH. If we have 300,000 people coming in per year illegally, and they are augmented by the group of individuals you just described, and you are deporting 100,000 or less, than it is getting worse every year.
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There are more and more people in the country illegally who are potentially criminals and, overall, the system is not going to improve. It is going to worsen until we get to the root causes.
Now you mentioned something I want to end on, and that is the word ''resources.'' It is really not your fault or my fault, but it is a frustration that I want to express.
We all know that we need more resources, we all know we need more Border Patrol agents or prosecutors or whatever it might be. Why is it that the administration refuses to request in their budget sufficient financial resources to accomplish the goals that we all agree need to be accomplished?
Mr. REED. Mr. Chairman, I can't answer that very well. I know that you have pushed us and challenged us on that issue repeatedly. I am really so far down the——
Mr. SMITH. That is what I say. You and I don't make those decisions, but it is a frustration. If everybody is talking about the same goals and you hear the same words from the administration and from members of Congress, we certainly ought to get together on the additional financial resources as well.
Mr. REED. We should, Mr. Chairman. And to the administration's credit, if we are going to go that way—we have been challenged very much realizing that at my level that we are not going to get some of these resources, to figure out a better way of doing business.
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We cannot look at this the way we have been looking at this in the past. I have been with Congressmen from Nebraska, Iowa—I don't want to go through it again. Everybody wants more agents in more towns and more jails all over the place. Just to do Utah, if we were to do that, we would end up with a couple hundred agents just going in the jails—forget about the detention halls and all the other ones.
Mr. SMITH. I am saying it would be nice if the administration converted its words into action, and we would get the money.
We are going to have to stop there. I am going to turn this over to Congressman Cannon and ask him if he will make some concluding remarks.
Mr. CANNON. Thank you very much for your testimonies. These are difficult issues. We share some serious concerns—these are bipartisan, I might say, across the committee, about how resources are applied.
The fact is, INS has been given a lot more funds recently, and I think what you are saying, Mr. Reed, is the INS needs to apply those better and the use of technology better. We really need to do something and we need to do it soon.
This problem goes to the moral fiber of our community as you start selling the new generation of drugs. It goes to the perception of American citizens about what constraints should be and where they can push. We need to retain that commitment to a society of law and order. So we pledge to work with you.
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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Cannon. I thank our witnesses on the second panel. I thank everybody here for their interest in such a crucial, important, and personal issue. And, with that, the Immigration Subcommittee will stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, the subcommittee was adjourned.]
(Footnote 1 return)
See Senate Report 105-235, entitled Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriation Bill, 1999 to accompany S. 2260.