New law to punish countries for not taking back criminal citizens
New law to punish countries for not taking back criminal citizens
Posted: Monday, August 15, 2016 10:28 pm
KRISTIAN HERNANDEZ | STAFF WRITER
Every year Homeland Security is forced to free thousands of violent criminals in the country illegally after their repatriations are refused or delayed by their home countries, but a new bill aims at holding these recalcitrant countries accountable.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., introduced the Remedies for Refusal or Repatriation Act or Casey’s Law in July. The law is named after Casey Chadwick from Norwich, Connecticut, who was killed by a Haitian citizen months after he was released from jail by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes should not be left on our streets, and if other countries won’t cooperate in taking them back there should be consequences,” wrote Sen. Cornyn in a news release last month.
The bill establishes procedures to determine whether a foreign country systematically and unreasonably refuses or delays the repatriation of nationals who are in the United States and would require an annual report to Congress identifying those countries that systematically refuse or delay repatriation of its citizens and describing the actions taken in response, according to Cornyn’s spokeswoman, Libby Hambleton.
“Ultimately, these countries are currently not facing any real sanctions, which do not provide them with any reason to cooperate.” Hambleton wrote. “Some countries will dispute the claim that the criminal is actually a citizen of the country, others will slow walk the process, and because they aren’t facing any real sanction, they can continue to delay.”
Since the 2001 Supreme Court Decision of Zadvydas v. Davis, a person with a final removal order can only be detained up to180 days, according to a July statement from ICE Deputy Director Daniel Ragsdale before the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“Consequently, ICE has been compelled to release thousands of individuals, including many with criminal convictions, some of whom have gone on to commit additional crimes,” Ragsdale said.
In June, Haitian native Jean Jacques, 40, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the stabbing death of 25-year-old Chadwick. Jacques had been out of prison for six months at the time of the murder after serving more than a decade for attempted murder, according to court records.
After serving his sentence, in 2014 the United States tried repeatedly to deport him because he was also found to be living in the country illegally, but his native country wouldn’t take him back, according to a May 11, story from The Associated Press.
The AP reports that Jacques was one of more than 19,700 convicted criminals that were released in FY 2015. That same year ICE deported more than 235,400 people; 59 percent of whom were previously convicted of a crime, according to Ragsdale.
As of May 2, ICE has found 23 countries considered uncooperative, including Afghanistan, Algeria, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Zimbabwe. In addition ICE is also monitoring and additional 62 countries with strained cooperation, according to Ragsdale.
To hold these countries accountable, the new bill would allow the State Department to deny visas to citizens of these countries, and would make the lists and the actions taken against them public, the release states.
In January 2015, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, introduced a version the 2013 Timely Repatriation Act which aimed to address the same issues, but was never enacted. The 2015 version of this bill aims to achieve many of the same restrictions as the new Remedies for Refusal or Repatriation Act but has also not advanced to the House or Senate.
New law to punish countries for not taking back criminal citizens
