STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARL LEVIN
PERMANENT SUBCOMMITTEE ON
INVESTIGATIONS
HEARING ON
RELEASE OF PERSONS ARRESTED FOR ILLEGAL ENTRY
INTO THE U.S.
NOVEMBER 13, 2001
Today the Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations will hear from current and past
employees of the U.S. Border Patrol who have come
forward to express their concern and dismay at
INS practices involving the release of persons
arrested for trying to gain illegal entry into
the U.S. While the problems raised by the
Border Patrol agents would be serious in normal
circumstances, they carry particular weight since
the attacks of September 11th.
The U.S. Border Patrol is, according to its own
description, the mobile uniformed law enforcement
arm of the INS. It was officially established in
1924 and was given the responsibility of
combating alien smuggling and illegal entries
other than at ports of entry. While the
Border Patrol itself has changed significantly
over the years, its principal mission has
remained the same.
The area we will be focusing on in this hearing
involves the illegal entry of persons into the
United States outside the normal ports of entry.
Ports of entry are the only places where people
may legally enter the United States. They
are locations such as airports, bridges, and
highways where INS officers and Customs Agents
review persons, papers and luggage to decide
whether to allow someone into the United States.
Today’s hearing looks at illegal entries
made at places other than these official ports.
While the statistics we use to illustrate
the problem may include people who have been in
the country illegally for some time, I want to be
clear, here, that what we are focusing on today
are people who are arrested while trying to slip
across our borders without subjecting themselves
to inspection at a port of entry as required by
law. “Inspection,” by the way, is
the INS term for reviewing documentation.
Our witnesses today are from two sectors of the
Border Patrol. As you can see from this
map, the Border Patrol is divided into 21
sectors, and the representatives we have
testifying today are from the Detroit Sector,
which covers four states - Michigan, Ohio,
Indiana and Illinois - and the Blaine Sector,
which covers Alaska, Oregon and the western half
of the state of Washington.
When persons are arrested by the Border Patrol,
the large majority voluntarily returns to their
country of origin, usually Mexico or Canada. The
others - perhaps as many as one third of those
arrested on the Northern Border and significantly
less on the Southern Border - are given a notice
to appear at a removal hearing. The Border
Patrol decides whether the person should be
detained, released on bond or, as is most often
the case, released on his or her own recognizance
while awaiting the hearing. The removal
hearing can take several months to occur.
Detention decisions are not made by the Border
Patrol alone. If the Border Patrol decides
to detain a person or set a bond to help assure
that a person shows up at the hearing, the INS
deportation office can revise that decision and
order the person released on a lower bond or on
his or her own recognizance. (To be
released on your own recognizance means that you
are released on your promise that you will appear
at the scheduled hearing; there is no bond.)
For a number of reasons that we will be
discussing at this hearing, the Border Patrol and
the INS release on their own recognizance a
significant number of people who are arrested for
illegal entry even though the record is clear
that most won’t show up at their removal
hearing. That means that most people who
get caught and arrested for illegal entry who don’t
voluntarily return to their own country are
allowed to move at will in this country with no
constraints other than a written instruction to
appear a hearing that is likely to result in
their removal from the country.
This is absurd. Look at the statistics we
were able to obtain from the Detroit Sector.
In Fiscal Year 2001, the Detroit Sector of the
Border Patrol arrested 2106 people. A
significant percentage of those were arrested
while actually attempting to enter the country
illegally. Of those 2106, slightly less
than two thirds were voluntarily returned to
their country of origin; 773 were issued
Notices to Appear at a removal hearing. Pending
their removal hearing and based on statistics
provided by Border Patrol agents, we estimate
that 85% of the 773 were released on their own
recognizance, or about 650 people. So, how
many of these people actually show up for their
hearings? The INS doesn’t know. One
former INS District Director and Border Patrol
Chief told us that he thought the percentage of
persons arrested outside a port of entry and
released without bond who don’t show up for
their hearing was 90%.
Our conclusion is that the vast majority of
people arrested by Border Patrol while attempting
to enter the country illegally in the Detroit
Sector who don’t voluntarily return to their
country, are released on their own recognizance
and don’t show up for their removal hearings.
And to add insult to this injury, the INS has
told us that if a person doesn’t appear at
their hearing, little or no effort is made to
find them. I view this as a dysfunctional,
absurd system. The INS must know, even
without keeping statistics, that once a person is
released after being arrested for illegal entry,
they stand a very good chance of avoiding removal
at all. So why do they continue to release
so many on their own recognizance?
Today we will hear not only from Border Patrol
officers on the front lines, we will also hear
from the first panel of witnesses who represent
INS and Border Patrol management.
We are an open and generous country and we
welcome persons from around the world who want to
contribute their hard work to the egalitarian
values of our society. But we also have a
duty to protect ourselves and our country from
persons who would do us harm, and when we release
persons into the country who are without an
address, without ties, without any record of who
they are or what they’ve done, we’re
abdicating our responsibility to the larger
community.
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