HELP DEPORT ILLEGAL ALIENS!

ISSUE: Our boys on the border need some help enforcing the immigration laws of the United States -- and some in Congress are prepared to give them that help, from our boys in blue.

U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-GA) has introduced a bill that addresses the growing U.S. criminal alien crisis by allowing the over 600,000 state and local law enforcement officials in the field to enforce immigration laws during the course of exercising their regular duties.

The bipartisan bill, entitled the "Clear Law Enforcement for criminal Alien Removal Act of 2003" (or CLEAR Act - H.R. 2671) brings clarity and coordination to our national immigration system and support and relief to the roughly
2,000 Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE) agents charged with enforcing immigration laws on the books.

There are upwards of 400,000 individuals who have received final deportation orders that are hiding in our communities. Their appeals have run out, and the orders tell them, "it's time to go." But the out-manned Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement can't find them! What's worse, 80,000 of those people have criminal
convictions. They were in the hands of law enforcement, but were released back onto the streets. "Can you imagine opening the doors of our prisons and letting 80,000 criminals run back into the streets?" asked Rep. Norwood. "That's exactly what's happened with these 80,000
criminals."

Today's broken enforcement system has left our state and local law enforcement community increasingly unclear on whether they hold the jurisdictional power to enforce our federal immigration laws. The CLEAR Act clarifies
that our state and local officers have the inherent authority to arrest and detain criminal and illegal aliens during the normal course of their duty. Additionally, the bill provides these officers with the appropriate funding and training to adequately enforce the immigration laws, and full access to a new National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database containing the records of any and all violators of
immigration law.

The CLEAR Act also creates a new system for BICE to take custody, process, and remove illegal aliens. Additionally, it produces a system of accountability by requiring the federal government to either take custody of illegal aliens or else pay the locality to detain the aliens.

ACTION ITEM: Right now if a local officer in your hometown, during the normal course of his or her duty, pulls over a car for speeding, with someone who is illegally in our country, they have to call BICE, verify their status, and wait until someone from BICE comes to pick them up. Sometimes they have to wait for hours on the roadside for the pickup to arrive. But most of the time BICE says they're too busy to come by -- telling the police to let the lawbreakers go. As Rep. Norwood says, "That is as wrong as the day is long and it's high time we fixed it."

This bill, with 43 co-sponsors, has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary; it needs OUR help to get it out on the floor for a vote. Go to our site below to send your Congressman a FREE message, asking him or her to support H.R. 2671, the "CLEAR Act":

CLICK HERE TO SEND MESSAGE

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