WASHINGTON – With the Boston Marathon bombing investigation focusing on two ethnic Chechens admitted to this country as refugees, the initial wave of public opinion late last week seemed skeptical about immigration reform.
But this week's second wave of reaction to the Boston terrorism – on Capitol Hill, at least – appeared to boost efforts to gain Senate approval for a bipartisan immigration overhaul bill backed by U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and other senators.
Arguing that the plan would “make America safer and more secure,” Durbin pressed Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at a Senate hearing on Tuesday to agree that the immigration bill, by providing more data on millions of people who now live in this country without legal papers, would strengthen security.
“Up to 11 million undocumented people will step forward, be identified by our government as to who they are, where they live, where they work, [and] be subject to a criminal background check,” Durbin said at the Judiciary Committee hearing. “It seems obvious to me that, with that knowledge, we will be a safer nation.”
Napolitano agreed, telling senators that “we'll have more identifications, more metrics, more biographic reviews” of people now in this country illegally. She said police favor the plan because it would encourage illegals who witness crimes to come out of the shadows and testify against criminals.
Tracking immigrants' comings and goings
But the panel’s ranking Republican, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and some other GOP senators pressed Napolitano about weaknesses in the nation’s current homeland security system, including the failure to track accurately the departures of people admitted into this country on time-limited visas.
“Our immigration system is directly related to our sovereignty and national security matters,” said Grassley, who had caused a stir Friday when he suggested that Congress should slow down the push for immigration reform while the lessons of the Boston investigation are considered.
On Monday, Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a strong backer of immigration reforms, accused Republicans of trying to “exploit” the bombings for political gain.
On Tuesday, Grassley contended that the bipartisan immigration bill would weaken the entry-exit system “because it does not require biometric identifiers and does not deploy a biometric system to land ports.” He argued that some foreign terrorists have entered this country legally (via tourist or other visas) and managed to stay “below the radar.”
One of the two Boston suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev – the older brother, killed last week after a gunfight with police – had traveled from the U.S. to Russia in 2012 and spent about six months there before returning. A misspelling of Tsarnaev's name on flight records when he left this country may have been a factor in the fact that some law enforcement agencies were not alerted about that travel and his return.
In his comments, Durbin mentioned the problem of tracking visa-holders who come to this country and promise to depart at some point "Our system, at least up to now, has been unable to track their departure, so we can close the loop" to confirm that they left as promised, he said. But he said the proposed new immigration law would provide the funds for improved technology to fix that problem.
Asked if she was confident that Homeland Security could accomplish that goal in the near future, Napolitano said "the electronic ‘exit system’ for air and sea in the bill is very consistent with the plan we've already submitted to Congress and what we are implementing now. So it is an achieveable goal."
Other senators pressed Napolitano on why federal authorities had not fully investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, after Russian officials had asked about him – and, more importantly, when he returned to this country after six months that his relatives have said included visits to Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region.
Both the Tsarnaev brothers had been admitted to this country legally, under the refugee status granted to their parents – about a decade ago. The younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19, who is now hospitalized in police custody and charged with one bombing – had become a naturalized U.S. citizen last year and Tamerlan had applied for naturalization.
Grassley alleged that “it’s no secret that terrorists are trying to exploit the [asylum] system.”
But Durbin countered that “there is nothing in this [immigration reform] bill that weakens the authority or the responsibility of . . . our federal government to establish, through rigorous biographic and biometric checks, through law enforcement and intelligence checks -- including the FBI, the Defense Department and other agencies – whether those seeking asylum would pose any threat to the United States."
Napolitano defended the investigations involved in granting political asylum to refugees. “As you go through that asylum application process, there (is) a number of times (when) individuals are rechecked, re-vetted, against law enforcement national security databases, re-interviewed,” she said. “Information is also gathered to help ascertain the credibility of the claim of persecution."
A classified briefing given later Tuesday to many lawmakers was expected to clarify some of the issues related to the Tsarnaev brothers, including the travel of Tamerlan to Russia, the lack of U.S. questioning about his activities there, and whether the brothers had any links to international terror groups.
According to authorities, Dzhokhar has indicated from his hospital bed that he and his brother acted alone, with no direct help from abroad. Any connection was also denied this week by the Caucasian Emirate, the strongest insurgency movement in the North Caucasus region of Russia. Some family members said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become increasingly sympathetic to the political aspects of Islam in recent years.
The Boston Marathon bombing occurred the same week that a bipartisan group of eight senators, including Durbin, had announced their agreement on a compromise bill to revamp the nation’s immigration system. If approved by Congress, it would represent the most extensive immigration reform in a quarter century.
The compromise legislation would pave a 13-year citizenship pathway for millions who are living in this country without legal documents; it aims to bolster border security; create work opportunities for tens of thousands of new high-tech and low-skilled workers; and crack down on firms that fail to check the legal status of their employees.
GOP divided on immigration reform
On Monday, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. – last year’s GOP presidential running mate – said separately that concern over the Boston bombings should not block congressional efforts to revamp the immigration system.
“If we fix our immigration system, it may actually help us understand who all is here, why they're here and what legal status they have,” Boehner told Fox News. Appearing at an event in Chicago, Ryan even suggested that the Boston attacks should lead to a modernization of the nation’s immigration system.
“We have a broken immigration system, and if anything, what we see in Boston is that we have to fix and modernize our immigration system for lots of reasons," Ryan said. “National security reasons, economic security reasons. For all those reasons, we need to fix our broken immigration system.”
But Grassley’s concerns were echoed by several conservative Republicans who urged caution in pushing forward quickly with immigration reform. “The facts emerging in the Boston Marathon bombing have exposed a weakness in our current system,” wrote U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “If we don't use this debate as an opportunity to fix flaws in our current system, flaws made even more evident last week, then we will not be doing our jobs.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee had planned to spend much of the next month on immigration reform, likely to debate and vote on dozens of amendments being pushed by both GOP and Democratic senators. Neither of Missouri’s senators is on the committee, but Durbin – who chairs one of its subcommittees – is a key player.
So far, U.S. Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., have been relatively cautious in their comments about immigration reform and the possible lessons from Boston. McCaskill is thought to be leaning toward supporting an immigration revamp but first wants to see how it is amended in the committee.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he wants the full Senate to vote on immigration legislation by this summer. In a letter Tuesday responding to Rand Paul’s concerns, Reid said he was convinced that the bill would strengthen national security:
“The bipartisan immigration reform proposal introduced last week would enable us to identify and perform criminal background and national security checks on immigrants who are here unlawfully.”