Mike Cutler:
"After the senator and the U.S. attorney engaged in a bit of bantering about a recent trip they had taken to Italy together, D'Amato turned to the issue of the penalties for the crime of Re-Entry After Deportation. U.S. Attorney Giuliani asked me for the statute concerning this crime and I told him that it was to be found in Title 8 of the United States Code, Section 1326. After a short while, Giuliani got back on the phone, obviously he tracked down the law and said that I was correct, that the maximum punishment was 2 years in jails and that the law did not differentiate between aliens who had criminal convictions and aliens who did not. He told Senator D'Amato that boosting the penalties for criminals who are deported and illegally re-enter the United States was a great idea! "
Complete email from Mike Cutler:
The story I am about to tell you is a bit lengthy but I believe it is worth reading for several reasons. It shows how politicians can conduct themselves responsibly when they are given relevant facts. It also provides some insight to one of the candidates who is currently running for President. I am referring to none other than Rudy Giuliani. The news story I have attached below should get all of us to sit up and pay attention! Before I get to Mr. Giuliani's outrageous statement, I would like to provide some background.
In the mid 1980's I began working with then New York Senator Alphonse D'Amato on a number of immigration-related issues. I approached his staff about the need to address the immigration issue at a time that the number of criminal aliens was soaring and the agency that was supposed to lead the charge was refusing to take itself and its responsibilities seriously. The first time I made an appointment to go to the senator's office I brought along my first wife who subsequently passed away more than 20 years ago. We were both surprised that as I met with members of the senator's staff, Al D'Amato, himself poked his head into the meeting room and chatted with us for about 10 minutes. He went on to tell me that he would support my recommendations if was able to get some of my colleagues to corroborate my assertions.
I began cajoling and pleading with about 30 of my then colleagues to go to the senator's New York office which was located in the Madison Square Garden Complex. Finally, the senator agreed to another meeting that was supposed to last for 30 minutes. I brought 3 of my colleagues with me and we sat down in the senator's law library and waited for him along with a couple of his staffers. Suddenly, the senator strode into the room, carrying a huge, white mug containing steaming coffee. The mug was emblazoned with big, bold, black letters that simply said, "THE BOSS."
In the days before the meeting I focused on what I would say to him. I knew that I would only get one chance to really get his attention and so these words would be critical. I like to say that you only get one opportunity for a first impression. I felt that this first impression that the words would convey had to grab his attention immediately. After we introduced ourselves to him he said, "Mikey, how can I help you?"
I looked him in the eye and as best as I can recall, I said, "Senator, we thank you for taking time out from what we know is an incredibly busy schedule. The four of us seated in your office today are civil servants who are concerned about the situation at the INS. (One of us, Pete Mastrosimone was a supervisory immigration inspector who would die a few short years later of a heart attack. The other two guys who accompanied me were criminal investigators (special agents) as I was at that time.) I went on and told the senator that, "While we were all federal officers that we had come as his constituents, as tax payers who had all come to the unhappy conclusion that we were unable to get our money's worth from our own efforts, not because of any of our failings but because of the failings of the agency that employed us, the Immigration and Naturalization Service."
It was clear that the words resonated with the senator because he looked me squarely in the eye and asked us to explain what was going on. He seem angry, not at us, but at the picture we painted.
After about 30 minutes, one of the senator's aides stepped into the room to remind him of a luncheon appointment with an ambassador of a foreign government. We were never told who the ambassador was nor the country he represented. What surprised us was that Senator D'Amato told his aide to get someone from his office to take the dignitary to lunch because he felt that the meeting we were having with him was far too important to end. He wound up spending more than 2 hours with us.
He asked me if there was anything that I thought should be done to address some of the many failings at the INS. I provided him with 3 suggestions. I told him that it made no sense to not differentiate criminal aliens from those illegal aliens who were working illegally in the United States. The mind-set that an arrest was an arrest and that agents were evaluated purely by the number of aliens arrested and processed was absurd. I also explained that the agency was playing a "numbers game." I asked him what he thought the statement that a thousand illegal aliens had been arrested and processed for deportation meant. He told me that it sounded as though a thousand illegal aliens had been deported. I surprised him by telling him that this statement simply meant that one thousand illegal aliens were taken into custody and that the paperwork was done and that the agency counted the number of aliens processed for deportation even though many of the aliens were then released, only to disappear into communities in New York. This was the early version of the now infamous "Catch and Release" program. As you might expect, Senator D'Amato was thoroughly angered by this revelation!.
Next I told him that I would suggest that aliens who were serving jail sentences should be process for deportation inside the jails and that deportation hearings should also be conducted inside the jails in which they were incarcerated. It made no sense to have an alien serve many years behind bars and that the INS would then initiate deportation proceedings upon his release from prison. In these situations either these criminal aliens were held in our detention facilities that lacked adequate resources, or the criminal aliens were allowed to post bail and go back on the street whereupon they either absconded, committed additional crimes, or did both. In my judgement, holding hearings inside a jail would provide the alien who had been ordered deported to appeal his deportation and then ultimately be given a final order of deportation before his prison sentence expired. In these cases, these aliens would simply be taken to an airplane upon the completion of their criminal sentences and removed from our country. (This program was put into effect and became known as the Institution Hearing Program.) Like everything else at the former INS and now at DHS, limited resources hobble this program.
Finally, I suggested that the penalty for the crime of Re-Entry After Deportation be increased from the maximum of two years in jail to a maximum of 20 years in custody for criminal aliens. It made no sense to me or my colleagues who accompanied me to that meeting that the law did not differentiate between criminal aliens and aliens who were administrative law violators. Senator D'Amato was incredulous! He had trouble believing what we told him, so he called his good friend, the man who, at the time occupied the powerful position of United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudy Giuliani. D'Amato had one of his staffers call Giuliani's office and had the call put on the speaker phone.
After the senator and the U.S. attorney engaged in a bit of bantering about a recent trip they had taken to Italy together, D'Amato turned to the issue of the penalties for the crime of Re-Entry After Deportation. U.S. Attorney Giuliani asked me for the statute concerning this crime and I told him that it was to be found in Title 8 of the United States Code, Section 1326. After a short while, Giuliani got back on the phone, obviously he tracked down the law and said that I was correct, that the maximum punishment was 2 years in jails and that the law did not differentiate between aliens who had criminal convictions and aliens who did not. He told Senator D'Amato that boosting the penalties for criminals who are deported and illegally re-enter the United States was a great idea!
As the federal prosecutor he was at that time, Giuliani certainly understood the concept of deterrence! Unbeknownst to me at the time, Walter Connery, the former head of the Internal Affairs Division of the INS who would shortly report to New York as the chief of investigation or Assistant District Director for Investigations and a former high-ranking member of the NYPD and a lawyer in his own right, would submit a legislative proposal to Senator D'Amato that paralleled my suggestion about increased penalties for the crime of unlawful re-entry into the United States by aliens who had been deported and had criminal convictions. The law was changed and now, under the current law, an alien who is defined as a "Aggravated Felon" may serve a maximum of 20 years in prison if he is deported and re-enters the United States without authorization.
Back then, United States Attorney Giuliani was a prosecutor, indeed, he was the preeminent federal prosecutor in New York.
When he was elected mayor of New York, Giuliani stated that he subscribed to the "Broken windows approach to law enforcement." You can read an interview he gave in May, 2003 where he discussed many issues, including the "Broken windows approach to law enforcement." I have attached the link to this interview below:
His quote about "Broken Windows" follows (I have taken the liberty to highlight the most interesting part of his statement):
Rudolph Giuliani: Well, I very much subscribe to the "Broken Windows" theory, a theory that was developed by Professors Wilson and Kelling, 25 years ago maybe. The idea of it is that you had to pay attention to small things, otherwise they would get out of control and become much worse. And that, in fact, in a lot of our approach to crime, quality of life, social programs, we were allowing small things to get worse rather than dealing with them at the earliest possible stage. That approach had been tried in other cities, but all small cities, and there was a big debate about whether it could work in a city as large as New York. One of the ways that New York used to resist any kind of change was to say, "It can't work here," because they wanted to keep the status quo. There is such a desire for people to do that, to keep the status quo. And I thought, "Well, there's no reason why it can't work in New York City. We have bigger resources. We may have bigger problems, we have bigger resources, the same theory should work." So we started paying attention to the things that were being ignored. Aggressive panhandling, the squeegee operators that would come up to your car and wash the window of your car whether you wanted it or not -- and sometimes smashed people's cars or tires or windows -- the street-level drug-dealing; the prostitution; the graffiti, all these things that were deteriorating the city. So we said, "We're going to pay attention to that," and it worked. It worked because we not only got a big reduction in that, and an improvement in the quality of life, but massive reductions in homicide, and New York City turned from the crime capital of America to the safest large city in the country for five, six years in a row.
Here is my point; Mr. Giuliani, as mayor, said that he went after the low level crimes. This is stunning when you consider that he was willing to have the cops arrest those who wielded squeegees or spray paint cans that they used to create graffiti, but now declares that illegal aliens who run our borders should not be arrested! This absolutely takes my breath away!
Mayor Giuliani presided over New York City when it was a so-called "Sanctuary City." You can read the transcript of a hearing at which I testified on February 27, 2003 before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims entitled, "NEW YORK CITY'S 'SANCTUARY' POLICY AND THE EFFECT OF SUCH POLICIES ON PUBLIC SAFETY, LAW ENFORCEMENT AND IMMIGRATION."
In an era of escalating gang activity and the threat of terrorism, Mr. Giuliani apparently does not consider the millions of illegal aliens who violate our borders to be committing a crime, but considered it worthwhile to go after teenagers who spray painted graffiti on buildings and other places! I frankly do not like graffiti, but what is a bigger threat to our safety? I certainly did not like the squeegee guys approaching my car and engage in aggressive panhandling, but really, is this a crime or simply a matter of disorderly conduct?
Giuliani certainly "gets it" but then makes contradictory statements! H cannot have it both ways!
He must know that many illegal aliens do not run our nation's borders but rather enter through ports of entry and then, in one way or another, violate the terms of their entry into our country.
I have made this point many time before and feel compelled to make it again. It is impossible to control illegal immigration at the border if aliens come to realize that they can count on getting rewarded for running our nation's borders if they manage to get past the Border Patrol agent or CBP inspector. I know that Rudy is an avid Yankees fan. He must realize that to not enforce the immigration laws from the interior of the United States would be the equivalent of a baseball team playing the game but having their outfielders sit out the game. Under such bizarre circumstances, anyone who could hit the ball over the second baseman's head would probably get an in the park home run!
Special agents are also desperately needed to do more than simply attempt to arrest aliens who are working illegally. We need thousands of special agents at ICE to go after the fraud in the immigration benefits program that not only rewards aliens who furnish false information on their applications for immigration benefits, but also represents a threat to national security by enabling spies and terrorists to easily game the system and acquire resident alien status and even United States citizenship.
It sometimes seems that it would be easier to nail Jello to the wall than pin down our politicians especially where the critical issue of immigration is concerned!
We the People have to get involved in the political process. The upcoming election will, I believe, mark a critical opportunity for our nation and our citizens. We are a nation at crossroads and we had better make certain that the next occupant of the Oval Office will represent our best interests rather than the best interests of special interest groups and corporations! There will be no "Do Overs!"
If, as the saying goes, "A squeaky wheel gets the grease," then We the People had better get noisy!
Democracy is not a spectator sport!
Lead, follow or get out of the way!
-michael cutler-
