Immigration Bills in Congress - May 19, 2017
Today the House Judiciary Committee is considering a trio of immigration bills that would
further ramp up immigration enforcement and target all undocumented immigrants for
detention and deportation.
H.R. 2431, the Davis-Oliver Act (Forum summary here), would criminalize unlawful
presence in the U.S. and require state and local law enforcement to redirect their limited
resources toward immigration enforcement, among other provisions. An Immigration and
Customs Enforcement authorization bill would provide for an additional 10,000 deportation
officers and open up DHS databases to the agency’s Enforcement and Removal
Operations unit, raising the possibility that they could target recipients of Deferred Action
for Childhood Arrivals and their family members.
A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services authorization bill would shift the agency’s
focus away from naturalization and would permanently authorize E-Verify.
In case they are helpful, here are the Forum’s statement on the markup, a letter from law
enforcement leaders and an op-ed by two Texas sheriffs. Below please find suggested
messaging.
Topline: Focusing only on enforcement makes local law enforcement’s work harder, hurts
American workers and goes against our values.

Americans do not want mass deportations. Congress needs to work on balanced
proposals that keep us safe, keep our economy healthy and honor the freedom and
ideals that make us great.

Requiring local law enforcement to carry out immigration actions where no criminal
activity is involved strains resources and breaks down trust in law enforcement among
immigrant communities. No one wants crime to flourish, and that trust is crucial to
keeping all of us safe.

Fear and uncertainty in immigrant communities also can disrupt the workforce, with a
devastating impact on businesses and the local economy.

From a faith perspective, we must protect the unity of the immediate family. U.S.-citizen
children should not live in fear of their parents being deported.

An enforcement-only approach to immigration hurts Americans who have come to
know and love immigrants as friends, neighbors, and family.
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Border Action Network / Acción Fronteriza
PO Box 384 • Tucson, AZ • 85702
Ph 520.623.4944 • Fax 520.792.2097
[email protected] • www.borderaction.org
Please call your member of Congress and ask them to vote against
the Anti-Border Corruption Reauthoriization Act (HR 2213), a bill
that would eliminate critical polygraph requirements for some CBP
applicants. Eliminating the polygraph test will eliminate
accountability for a corruption-prone agency and will make it easier
for Trump to expand his deportation force. With all that is going on
with this administration, we should not be lowering accountability
for anyone.
Tom O’Halleran 202-225-3361
John McCain (520) 670-6334
Jeff Flake (520) 575-8633.
House and Senate Republicans Seek to Eliminate Accountability for Customs and Border
Protection and Fast-Track Trump’s Deportation Force
House and Senate Republicans have introduced two bills that seek to fast-track hiring and grow
Trump’s deportation force by weakening Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hiring
standards. The House Anti-Border Corruption Reauthorization Act (H.R. 2213), scheduled for
a floor vote on Wednesday, and the Senate Boots on the Border Act (S. 595), scheduled for
markup that day by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, eliminate
critical polygraph requirements that are widely used in federal law enforcement. Eliminating
these requirement will make it much easier for Trump to hire the additional 500 agents he has
requested in his Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Request. This is on top of the existing 21,000 agents
already authorized by Congress.
These bills threaten to repeat recent disastrous history, when agents hired during a 2006 CBP
surge frequently were corrupt—some working for international drug trafficking organizations—
and prone to abuses such as excessive uses of force and sexual assault. In fact, the current
polygraph examination requirement was enacted by Congress just seven years ago in the AntiBorder Corruption Act of 2010 and went into full effect only in 2013. Watering down CBP
hiring standards through polygraph loopholes is dangerous and would lead to employing CBP
officers and agents who harm national security by compromising the largest law enforcement
agency in the country.
The Republican bills eliminate accountability for a corruption-prone agency
• According to the Government Accountability Office, between 2005-2012 there were 2,170
reported incidents of arrests of CBP agents for misconduct. That’s nearly one CBP officer
or agent arrested for misconduct every single day for seven years.
• Almost 200 current or former CBP employees were arrested or indicted since October 2004
for corruption-related activities, such as the smuggling of immigrants and drugs, of whom
125 had been convicted as of October 2012.
• DHS’s own CBP Integrity Advisory Panel of outside law enforcement experts concluded in
2015 that “there is data indicating that arrests for corruption of CBP personnel far exceed,
on a per capita basis, such arrests at other federal law enforcement agencies.” In the final
report issued in 2016 the panel observed that “corrupt CBP law enforcement personnel
pose a national security threat” and recommended that current polygraph testing be
expanded to include post-employment tests that are best practices at the FBI and
agencies in the U.S. intelligence community.
The Polygraph Examination Is an Effective Component of CBP Vetting
• Congress mandated polygraphs for all CBP applicants in the Anti-Border Corruption Act of
2010.
• The FBI, DEA, ATF, and Secret Service make no exceptions to the test, but the House and
Senate Republican bills would allow CBP to exempt subgroups of federal/state/local law
enforcement and certain military and National Guard personnel. Many of these applicants
have never taken a polygraph exam or have never taken one as stringent as the one used
in federal law enforcement.
• Two-thirds of applicants fail the CBP polygraph and hundreds have admitted to serious
criminal activity during the screening process.
• Former CBP head of Internal Affairs, James Tomsheck, confirmed that applicants have
revealed engagement with drug cartels and smuggling activities during their polygraph
exams. He also stated that “[s]ome of the most significant corruption cases and excessive
use-of-force problems were CBP officers or Border Patrol agents who had been in the
military and had served in combat.”
• CBP maintains a list of criminal and other national-security-compromising admissions
revealed in failed polygraph exams. A FOIA includes descriptions of activity occurring
up to November 2012, and is a stark caution against eliminating the polygraph exam for
large groups of applicants when it contributes to revealing so much wrongdoing.
Congress should Increase Oversight and Accountability of CBP, not Water Down
Standards
• From January 2010, more than 50 people have died in encounters with CBP agents.
• Not only have Border Patrol agents been consistently implicated in excessive use of force, but
also in sexual misconduct. Between 2012 and 2014, he found there was a "spike" of
more than 35 sexual misconduct cases against agents, a rate he says was significantly
higher than other law enforcement agencies.
• Instead of taking short-cuts that would increase corruption and abuse, CBP should focus on
improving its accountability and transparency through measures such as body-worn
cameras and expanding as well as diversifying its applicant pool, which lags other law
enforcement agencies by for example currently having only 5% female Border Patrol
agents, the worst of any comparable federal force.
• Increasing hiring—even at ports of entry which are important to trade and tourism, but where
drugs frequently enter the country—isn’t a good thing if we have less confidence in the
integrity of the officers we’re bringing on board.
Border Action Network | , AZ 85702 | (520) [email protected]