Murthy Takes Action Against Proposed CLEAR Bill
Posted Jul 25, 2003

Attorney Murthy was interviewed by WJZ, the local CBS affiliate in the Baltimore-Washington area, and appeared on the July 12, 2003 evening news broadcast. Congressman Charlie Norwood of Georgia introduced a Bill on July 9, 2003, in the House of Representatives (H.R. 2671) that would require state and local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws in addition to their regular duties. This Bill, entitled Clear Law Enforcement for criminal Alien Removal Act of 2003 (or CLEAR Act), would allow over 600,000 state and local law enforcement officials in the field to enforce immigration laws while exercising their regular duties. Although, theoretically, this Bill seeks to provide a comprehensive solution to the difficult issue of enforcing our immigration laws, it raises serious concerns.

Bill Would Grant Immigration Powers to Local Law Enforcement

Representative Norwood’s proposed Bill would require that state and local officers enforce immigration laws or risk losing federal funding. Currently, roughly 2,000 trained agents of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency of U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), carry out functions pertaining to immigration enforcement. Law enforcement officials would be charged with the additional duty of investigating, apprehending, and detaining foreign nationals in the United States, and providing information about an apprehended foreign national to the DHS and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The Bill also proposes enhanced civil and criminal penalties for those unlawfully present in the U.S. and calls for listing immigration violators in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database.

Local Law Enforcement Cannot Master Complex Immigration Laws

Attorney Murthy spoke out against the proposed bill, and expressed her concern that state and local law enforcement authorities would be incapable of enforcing complex immigration laws. Such laws are difficult even for seasoned immigration enforcement officials to fully comprehend. As an example, she cited that a person with a pending asylum case has no papers other than an employment authorization document (EAD). An asylee has no formal approval from the BCIS until the completion of the asylum interview. State and local law enforcement officials possessing only fundamental or superficial knowledge of immigration laws, codes, and regulations will be unable to quickly make the complex analysis to determine whether a foreign national is in violation of his/her status and/or is, in fact, lawfully present in the U.S. We anticipate that, if this Bill were enacted, such a law would consistently result in errant arrests and detentions of many law abiding foreign nationals. More disturbing is that, once names get on the NCIC database, it is an administrative nightmare to remove the names of innocent people. Even ICE agents, many of whom were customs agents before immigration functions were transferred from the DOJ to DHS on March 1, 2003, are now learning the myriad and complex immigration laws. To expect local law enforcement to understand these issues and make correct judgments will compound the problem instead of solving it.

Proposed Solution : Allocate Federal Funds to ICE

A better solution may be to channel the federal funds proposed by this Bill to ICE to improve the training and knowledge and increase the number of immigration and customs inspectors already in place. It is naïve to think that local and state law enforcement officials, with minimal training and experience in U.S. immigration law, will be able to master the large and complex body of immigration laws, rules, and regulations in order to fairly and accurately enforce this body of federal law. Burdening our state and local law enforcement officials with this massive new responsibility would merely detract from their primary responsibility, which is to maintain the safety of our cities and neighborhoods. Their goal is to pursue criminals, those who violate our criminal codes; not to apprehend immigrants who may have stayed beyond the date initially allowed upon entry (an overwhelming majority of whom stay only to make a living to feed their families). A comprehensive solution is needed to enforce our complex immigration laws while continuing to provide the necessary human resources for continued growth and recovery of the U.S. economy. Justice cannot be served by finding a simple solution to a complex problem.