Bill Could Have Prevented At Least Eight Deaths
Washington, D.C. - According to a press report, a criminal immigrant from Vietnam who was ordered deported by an immigration judge six years ago for two convicted felonies was released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and is suspected for killing five people in San Francisco last week. Because Vietnam refused to provide the travel documents necessary for repatriation, the federal government was forced to release Binh Thai Luc onto the streets due to a Supreme Court decision that requires the release of dangerous illegal and criminal immigrants when they cannot be removed to their native country in the “reasonably foreseeable future.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) released the statement below.
Chairman Smith: “It is a tragedy that five Americans lost their lives because a dangerous criminal immigrant could not be deported to his home country. This makes at least eight preventable deaths because we have not signed a legislative remedy into law.
“Binh Thai Lac, an immigrant from Vietnam, was convicted of two felonies and ordered removed by an immigration judge in 2006. But since Vietnam refused to issue the travel documents necessary to send this criminal immigrant home, federal authorities were forced to release Luc back onto the street because of two Supreme Court rulings that have inadvertently created a safe haven for dangerous illegal and criminal immigrants. Just because a criminal immigrant cannot be returned to their home country does not mean they should be freed into our communities. Dangerous criminal immigrants need to be detained.
“Last year the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill to fix this problem, the Keep Our Communities Safe Act. This bill is desperately needed. We cannot continue to let dangerous criminal immigrants slip through the cracks of our legal justice system. We have a responsibility to make sure the laws of this land protect Americans rather than endanger them. While we are too late to undo past tragedies, we should act now to prevent many more.”
Background: In the 2001 decision of Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court ruled that under current law, immigrants who had been admitted to the U.S. and then ordered removed could not be detained for more than six months where removal would not occur in the “reasonably foreseeable future.” In the 2005 case of Clark v. Martinez, the Supreme Court expanded its decision in Zadvydas to apply to aliens who had entered the U.S. illegally. The problem with both of these rulings is that not every criminal immigrant who is ordered removed can be because of the unwillingness of some countries to accept return of their nationals.
As a result, the federal authorities have had no choice but to release thousands of criminal immigrants into our neighborhoods. In the last two years, close to 8,000 immigrants with orders of removal were released because their own countries refused to take them back. Justice Department officials have stated that these criminal immigrants include rapists, child molesters, murderers, and other dangerous criminals. To date, at least eight people have lost their lives because of this loophole: Hua Shun Lei, Vincent Lei, Ying Xue Lei, Wan Yi Xu, Chia Huei Chu, Ashley Chow, Qian Wu, and Ft. Myers, Florida Police Officer Andrew Widman.
Last July, the House Judiciary Committee approved the Keep Our Communities Safe Act (H.R. 1932), a bill to stop the release of dangerous criminal immigrants into American communities. The bill was reported favorably to the House floor by a vote of 17-14 and provides a statutory basis for DHS to detain as long as necessary specified dangerous criminal immigrants under orders of removal who cannot be removed.