Washington
Update
October 2003
The CLEAR Act:
Clearly Dangerous Legislation
By Merritt Becker, LIRS Policy Advocate
Currently there is a bill before Congress
that would allow state and local police to enforce federal civil
immigration laws. This bill, if passed, would have a dramatic
effect on the lives of the 8.2 million undocumented workers
living in the United States and trying to provide a decent living
for themselves and their families. It would also create an added
strain on the already overworked police departments working
to make our cities safe across the country. The bill, formally
called The CLEAR Act (Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien
Removal), was introduced this summer by Charles Norwood (R-GA9).
He was joined by Reps. Melissa Hart (R-PA4), Alan Boyd (D-FL2)
and Nathan Deal (R-GA10) as original co-sponsors. As of this
writing there are 87 co-sponsors in total on the bill.
The CLEAR Act gives police the legal authority
to enforce federal civil immigration laws, in effect allowing
local police to become immigration agents. Specifically CLEAR
permits state and local law enforcement to “investigate,
apprehend, detain or remove aliens in the United States (including
the transportation of such aliens across state lines to detention
centers).” The law criminalizes undocumented workers and
greatly expands penalties for immigration violations. For instance
an undocumented worker who has overstayed her visa in the United
States could be fined, imprisoned for a year and subjected to
forfeiture of all her assets. CLEAR also requires that every
immigration crime violator be entered into the National Crime
Information Center (NCIC) database. This could mean that millions
of names of people with civil or administrative immigration
violations, such as visa overstays, will be added to the NCIC.
By turning policemen into immigration agents
CLEAR would have many more immigrants avoid contact with their
local police, and would thereby put individuals and communities
at risk. Newcomers who are either victims or witnesses of crimes
would quickly learn to avoid any contact with police for fear
of being detained, deported or separated from their families.
And their silence would add to the danger in our cities.
As the Congressional Hispanic Caucus wrote
to the attorney general, “… to allow state and local
enforcement agencies to arrest suspected undocumented immigrants
based on immigrant status would erode the trust that has developed
between police and community residents in working together to
combat crime…it could interfere with effective anti-terrorist
initiatives…and would likely result in false arrests and
detention of people who merely appear to be foreign born.”
Who knows better about keeping our communities safe—Congress,
or our state and local police?
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