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“COUNTRIES REFUSE TO TAKE BACK LAWFULLY DEPORTED FOREIGN NATIONALS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H9538-H9539 on Sept. 15, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
COUNTRIES REFUSE TO TAKE BACK LAWFULLY DEPORTED FOREIGN NATIONALS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, America needs to do a better job of protecting our borders. It is the job of the Federal Government to do so. And the Federal Government must do a better job of keeping criminals out in the first place.
The Federal Government needs to make sure we deport foreign nationals after they have served their time and after they've been convicted in American prisons.
But there is a problem and let me explain. Right now foreign nationals who commit serious crimes in our country and are convicted and go to our prisons, while they are in prison, they are lawfully deported by our immigration judges. That's a good thing. And after they have served their time, of course, it's time for them to go back to where they came from.
But right now there are several countries that won't take back lawfully convicted foreign nationals. Those countries are Vietnam, Jamaica, China, India, Ethiopia, Laos, and Iran. These countries won't take back their convicted criminals. These individuals are really people without a country. So what happens to them? Because they have served their time in our Federal and State prisons for felonies, they are actually released back into our communities. They are people without a country.
Right now there are over 160,000 of these criminal aliens roaming our Nation and our streets. These people have been lawfully deported after they've served their prison time, but their home nation refuses to take them back.
So I am introducing legislation that will plug up this loophole. My bill will make it a lot more likely they will go back where they came from. This bill says that any country who won't take back lawfully convicted foreign nationals who have been deported will lose foreign aid. But China, for example, doesn't receive foreign aid; so what will happen to China is they will not receive legal visas for their citizens to come into the United States.
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No more student visas for China if they won't take back their convicted criminals that have been deported. None whatsoever.
The current law says the State Department may deny visas under these circumstances, but the State Department seems to refuse to send individuals back to their lawfully deported countries because, I guess, China, for example, is a trading partner and they don't want to hurt the feelings of China.
My bill won't allow the State Department to ignore that portion of the law. Therefore, it will be mandatory. If they refuse to take back convicted foreign nationals, that nation will lose the right to come here legally. We need to make sure that these individuals don't come here in the first place, especially the criminal element. All sorts of dangerous things are coming across our wide-open borders. The possibilities are endless for what could be just walking across our southern border.
We know about the human and sex trafficking, the drugs, the guns, the dirty money and the like. But what about chemical and biological or nuclear materials? Do we know? Well, we really don't know. We live in a dangerous world, and the criminal cartels that run loose on the southern border to me are just as dangerous to this Nation as the Taliban, and they are just as ruthless. Right now, they are in our own backyard.
In Texas, we are doing what we can on our own. Last week, the Governor of the State sent the Texas Rangers down to the southern border. They are being deployed in high traffic, high crime areas. The Governor has asked the National Guard to support the Texas Rangers. The Highway Patrol, the Department of Public Safety, aviation resources, and the Texas sheriffs are all part of this team to prevent the criminal element from coming into the United States. But our local law enforcement is overwhelmed, so the Federal Government needs to get its priorities straight.
Recently, at one of my town halls in August, talking about health care, an individual showed up and people in that town hall recognized who he was. His name was Ignacio Ramos. He and his wife, Monica, came just to appear at that town hall. When individuals in that town hall saw who he was, they stood, Mr. Speaker, for over 5 minutes and applauded the work of Ignacio Ramos and his partner and the work that they had done on the southern border of Texas. He and his partner, Jose Compean, were U.S. Border Patrol officers jailed for shooting a Mexican drug dealer. Their sentences were commuted, and properly so, by the prior administration. But it shows, Mr. Speaker, that our Federal Government doesn't have its priorities in order. They have them backwards.
One of the few things that our Constitution actually requires the Federal Government to do is to protect the national security of this Nation. Border security is a national security issue, and foreign criminals that have committed crimes in this Nation and been lawfully deported should be sent back home. We should do the obvious things first when it comes to national security. If a foreign national commits a felony in the United States and is deported but the home nation refuses to take back its outlaw, that country should lose foreign aid and the legal right to have its citizens come into the United States under our visa program.
And that's just the way it is.
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