John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), subcommittee ranking member.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis), who is the head of the Women's Caucus, and, as such, has worked hard for many years on this project.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I began on a note of congratulating the chairman of this committee who has been the first chairman to have began to get reauthorizations on the Department of Justice. I have been working on that for many years prior to him succeeding, but this is the first time that we have had them. This is the second time that we have had the authorization. What makes this bill even more important to me is that we have a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 in it as well. I congratulate a great number of our colleagues in the Senate, Senators Biden, Leahy, Specter, for working on this on their side; and we have all come together with what I think is a very important measure. Now, let me quickly get to three parts of this that are particularly important to me. For many years, I have been urging that in this program of Violence Against Women Act, we create specifically tailored programs to address the needs of communities of color. It draws on several Violence Against Women Act programs and finally ensures that we help people who either never receive the services or receive very few of them, and inserting this language into the bill is a monumental victory for communities of color fighting violence against women across this country. Secondly, the bill provides funding for various offices within the department. In particular, we build up the Office of Inspector General, putting in over $70 million a year. This office has been diligent in overseeing the department's war on terrorism, issuing reports on 9/11 detainees and pushing the department to change its procedures in many of the ways they handle terrorism matters. The third point that I consider extremely important is that our colleague from California, Adam Schiff, on the Judiciary Committee, was able to get language in that requires the Attorney General to report to Congress on the number of persons detained on suspicion of terrorism. If Members do not think that is an important subject, then we need to hold a special briefing for anybody that wants more information on it. It has been a highly controversial issue in the Judiciary Committee, notwithstanding the fact that everybody from the Attorney General on down has been dancing around these subjects. We also reauthorize the COPS office that the Clinton administration created, and the law enforcement people have been very proud of that fact. So for all of those reasons and more, I urge the House to, as close to unanimity as we may be able to come on this, pass this measure. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Zoe Lofgren), the head of her State delegation and member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I think our colleague from Georgia has an excellent amendment, but I think his deadline may be too generous. The Department of Homeland Security should report to Congress on the progress it is making to secure our borders, but, unfortunately, they have an unenviable record of submitting their reports to the Congress. Our ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee has written Secretary Chertoff twice on the repeated failures of the Department of Homeland Security to meet congressionally mandated deadlines. As you have stated, we have a duty to ensure that it is protecting the American people, and to do that we must receive information to ensure that the Department is up to the task. Every day that passes in which Congress does not receive this information is another day that the terrorists gain on us if they are planning the next attack. So I support the amendment of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price), which gives the Homeland Security Department a lot of time, but I think we want to ride a very careful herd over these fellows in terms of where they go from this amendment.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Berman).

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. This Norwood No. 65 amendment includes a number of provisions of the CLEAR Act; and in addition to giving State and local police the same authority to enforce immigration laws as a Federal agent, the provisions do not require, as a matter of fact limit, the amount of training that they could receive in order to enforce these rather technical provisions. Moreover, the provisions require the entry of millions of civil immigration law violators into the National Crime Information Center, an FBI database of those who are wanted; and these entries go on thousands of times each day. I am just wondering if my colleague, the author of this amendment, is aware of the incredible complexity that he is suggesting now be included in this measure. If these categories were limited to wanted criminals, that would be one consideration. However, the list includes millions of people with technical status violations that are fluid and easily remedied, and we would be creating, I think, in my judgment, an administrative nightmare. We have a lot of examples. But let me just close by saying that local police have more than enough work to do hunting down the people that are law violators. But entering the names of people with minor status problems into a criminal database would overwhelm it and mix those who may be legal and those who are not criminals with the rest who are. It exposes to liability for unlawful arrests. It discourages immigrants from working with local law enforcement. And those are the reasons I have serious reservations about this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I think the author of the amendment will rest more comfortably tonight when he finds that not only do the people that he described that do not want this amendment are joined by numerous State and local police departments across the Nation, but also scores of groups that work with victims of domestic violence. The proponents of this amendment must understand that there is nothing in this bill to ensure that ICE or SCAT in Homeland Security will be able to respond to the millions of requests from local police to pick up low-priority civil law violators. Remember what the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman) said: you cannot dump millions of people into this database and think it is going to work. It will not. Turn down the amendment.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. The other point that we would like to make, and there are so many, but the manager's amendment punishes amazingly battered immigrant women who would suffer some very harsh consequences when they are frequently forced by their batterers to use fraudulent travel documents. Under the Violence Against Women Act, battered immigrants are entitled to self-petition for immigration status, independent of their abusive U.S. citizen and lawful permanent residence spouse. So this would be a huge step backwards for those of us who have been working in this area. So I urge and I hope that because there has been insufficient attention given in the committee and since we did not know these were going to come up, that the manager's amendment will be turned back and that we be given an opportunity to examine this more than a dozen objections that we raise. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time on this side, although I am not opposed to the amendment of the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from California.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, we have had a lot of time here with the current administration to have ridden herd and call for an accounting. I think the gentleman from Georgia is forced, and we are all collectively forced, into this position. They have had plenty of time to have been far more compliant. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman).

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, how much time remains on both sides?

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. This amendment, I think, has been mischaracterized seriously. To allow 4 percent of new immigrants to have a chance to come to the country from under-represented nations is a way of addressing the imbalance that I do not think anybody would disagree with that exists in the immigration patterns, whether they are accidental or purposeful. There has been no time when race and ethnicity were not primary factors in immigration policy. Please, I think this is a very important provision. The Diversity Visa Program should be sustained, and I hope that the amendment will be turned away.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Chairman, the problem about fraud in this program is that people apply multiple times when the rules only allow one application a year per person. In some cases, multiple applications are the result of people trying to cheat the system; but in other cases, people may apply not understanding that, unlike many other lotteries, multiple applications are not allowed and do not really improve your chances. The State Department has already addressed this in several ways. This program, I want to emphasize to the membership, is extremely valuable for those countries that have so very few people coming in under the regular system, and I would not want us to take this out of the present law. It is working well. We have had many success stories, and we think that there is not a serious history of fraud in the program.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, as we have the right to close, I will reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I would be pleased to yield 30 seconds to the chairman of the committee.

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Chairman, we come to the floor with a 39-page manager's amendment that has never been considered in the committee during the rather lengthy number of times that we have held hearings at the subcommittee and full committee level. And while there are fortunately some parts of it that I can agree to, I have counted approximately nine parts of it that present very serious problems. One is that the punishment does not fit the crime. The manager's amendment would expand the definition of aggravated felony to include a wide range of passport and related document offenses, even if the person never spent a day in jail. As I have previously stated, the consequences of an aggravated felony conviction are severe. They include, among other things, mandatory detention, permanent deportation and ineligibility for any type of relief. And so I think that is a very serious criticism. It criminalizes the most vulnerable of our populations. This manager's amendment, with regard to passport fraud, would criminalize trafficking victims, victims of domestic violence or abuse, victims of animals, coyotes, and others who often do not have control over what documents are presented to immigration officials on their behalf. Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Berman), a member of the committee.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to House Resolution 612. The reason is I support and honor our troops and request an open debate on this subject on the floor.