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GA House Public Safety Committee hearing on HB 1105, (Friday) Feb. 16, 2004

VIDEO HERE.

Transcript by Rev.com My cost, $24.00 and two hours of my time – not counting attendance at the hearing.

Committee chair:
… want to speak, uh-

Terry Norris:
Sure.

Committee chair:
… to this bill. So, uh, I know that, uh, Terry Norris back there wants to speak to the bill.

Terry Norris:
Sure.

Committee chair:
I’m sure Mr. D.A. King wants to speak to the bill, so. And anyone else wish to speak to the bill today? Okay. D.A., if you’d like to go first, come up to the podium, please.

D.A. King:
I’ll let Terry go first.

Committee chair:
I think your hair might be a little longer up here, so we’ll let you-

D.A. King:
(laughs).

Committee chair:
[inaudible 00:00:37].

Speaker 4:
Mr. Chairman, I have a pass-out. Is that okay?

Committee chair:
Certainly. Mr. King, I certainly appreciate you being here. You’re always welcome to testify to this committee. We look forward to having, hearing what you have to say. Um, but I wanna remind you that it’s 11 o’clock on Friday, and-

D.A. King:
(laughs).

Committee chair:
… everybody’s been working hard this week, and we wanna get home, and-

D.A. King:
I’m, I’m acquainted with the, with the concept.

Committee chair:
So, thank you Chairman.

D.A. King:
Thank you. , I’m D.A. King, I’m President of the Dustin Inman Society. I’ve been on this campus since, for a very long time. I would like to say I had hair when I first got here, but I didn’t. This is my 19th session. I was here when we drafted this original law in 2006. I helped work on it in 2000-, I think, and nine. And again, in 2011. When it was drafted, the goal was to create a plan B for the 287-G program. I hope everyone knows what that is, but the whole goal here when we originally constructed the law was to simply put in place a system by which criminal aliens could be detected and reported to the federal authorities.
Uh, I don’t know what’s been presented so far, but I can tell you having been here, that it never occurred to us that there would need to be penalty involved, because it didn’t occur to us that the jailers would not comply with the law. So I have been doing for several years, open records requests, checking on compliance. And there was a great deal of difficulty in that process, because some jails don’t reply, and some jails simply tell me that, “we don’t have any paperwork or documents that will reflect compliance with this law.”
Now, I am told, and I don’t wanna pretend like I’m an expert on the interior operations of law enforcement. But I am told that there are documents and records that are not allowed to be shared that are, uh, law enforcement sensitive. The most recent case that I have done is, a hit and run perpetrator in Gwinnett County, was put in the Gwinnett County Jail on February the 7th. The charges were hit and run, no license, failure to report an accident. So with a series of open records requests, and I’ve gotten accustomed to doing this, because I’ve been doing it for several years, and I can’t remember how many I’ve done, more than 10 or 15.
The bottom line to me going and finding somebody that may or may not be in the country illegally, or at least being a foreign national. Getting an open records request to get amo-, as much information on that as I could, and then getting an additional arrest report from the arresting agency, and then seeing if the individual is in fact foreign born and would fall under the requirements of the law that you’re trying to change. Um, the final result on this most recent case was, when I asked for any documents or records, electronic or written, that will indicate compliance with 42414, I got back the same reply that I’ve always gotten when I get a reply, and that is, we have no records that are relevant to your request.
There is a system in this bill that will construct the systems so that A, the jailer would be attesting to self-compliance, and there would be a records trail for someone who comes behind me, to actually check on compliance and verify that, that, that the law is being obeyed. And, with the penalties involved, we hope that that will, will eventually happen. I, I wanna be quick. If anybody has any questions, that’s pretty much all I have to say.

Committee chair:
Do you have a question, Representative Evans?

Representative Evans:
Thank you Chairman. Yeah, I’m sorry, can you tell me your name one more time, and organization you’re with, please?

D.A. King:
I’m, I’m sorry, say again?

Representative Evans:
I just wanna know your name and organization. I didn’t, uh, write it down, when you first [inaudible 00:04:57].

D.A. King:
Oh, sorry. I was, I was speaking Friday fast. It’s the Dustin, D-U-S-T-I-N, Inman, I-N-M-A-N, Society. We are a 501-C4, under the IRS rules. We’ve been formed since 2005. We are made up of a variety of Americans, including real legal immigrants, and people of every hue and color. If I may, the Dustin Inman Society is named after a young man from Woodstock, Georgia, who was 16 years old forever, because he was killed when an illegal alien, to whom someone had given a job, benefits and services, crashed into the back of the Inman family car on Father’s Day weekend, the year 2000.
That wreck killed Dustin, put his mom and dad into a coma, his mom for several weeks. And when the parents woke up, they were told their only child was gone. Both of the parents have gone now, as a delayed reaction, and result of the crash I just told you about.

Committee chair:
So any other questions about specific, this bill, Ms. Evans, towards, uh, Mr. King? Uh, Representative Petrie? No?

Representative Petrie:
Yeah, I’m good.

Committee chair:
Okay, all right. Any other questions or comments towards, uh, Mr. King at this time? All right. Thank you very much.

D.A. King:
Thank you Mr. Chairman.

Committee chair:
Sure, appreciate you. We’ll call on our friend, Terry Norris, from the Sheriff’s Association now. Tell us what you don’t like about this bill.

Terry Norris:
How’d you know? No, uh, I am Terry Norris. I’m Executive Director of the Georgia Sheriff’s Association. Um, this is my 42nd year, D.A.. Uh, in some ways, I knew more about the legislative process in 1982, than I do in 2024, but I’m learning. So, uh, I’m not here to oppose the bill. Uh, we agree, uh, through our practice at the Association, our training, and as we had mentioned, uh, and through our, um, office of the Sheriff Accreditation Program, uh, certainly that we agree with current law which requires sheriffs to report to ICE on those illegals arrested.
And before I continue I wanna thank, uh, Representative Petrie. Uh, he, we had several meetings and conversations about the bill. Some of our thoughts did not make it to the bill, and I’ll express those to you today, but I don’t… we, we don’t oppose in any way bringing this bill forth for conversation. So we agree with the fact that we should obey the law, comply with the law. Um, but we disagree in a couple of ways. Uh, criminalizing this, uh, is a little bit of an overstep.
There’s currently in the law, under I think, um, Count 15-16-26, where the governor can empanel a committee of two sheriffs and the Attorney General to look at cases where sheriffs are accused of, um, violating the law, malfeasance, uh, [inaudible 00:08:05], et cetera. And that panel has been used throughout the years. So there is a, a current, uh, ability to look at a sheriff who may not be complying with this or any other law.
The, uh, the second thing is, about the report to Department of Audits. Uh, and I’ll say this, and I don’t mean to offend the State or what the State does in terms of appropriating funds throughout the state. But, the State does not fund jails. Jails are highly expensive. Uh, jails are physically, the jails are owned by the County Governing Authorities. The people that are in jail are under the custody, care, safety of the sheriff. The sheriff has sole custody of those people, and we expect the sheriffs to comply with reporting to ICE, as I have said, as it is in the, in current law.
Um, but, many of you who have been around a little while remember, up until last year I believe it was, the Department of Community Affairs compiled a monthly jail report. That jail report was a simple report. It didn’t go very far. Uh, that was discontinued, and we at the Sheriff’s Association, at the, the instruction of the sheriffs, was to create a more robust reporting of sheriff’s jail activities, and we have done that. It is still evolving. Uh, frankly, it is not, uh, currently part of reporting to ID the people we’re talking about here, but that is in the plans.
So, we wanna go further in our general report. And part of the reason that we want to, is we want you all to know who, or who is in county jails, why are they in there. And frankly, a lot of people in county jails right now, um, are, prior to criminal justice reforms, would’ve been in prisons. So what we, what happens when we put people in county jails? Most of the time, almost extensively, the cost of county jails are bore by the local property tax payers. So when we leave people in county jails that might, should be in the state prison system, we’re causing our local property taxpayers to pay the costs of mental health, drugs, all sorts of things.
So I, I say all that, I know I digressed a little bit there. But I say all that to let you know that we are very proud of the product we’re developing on jail reports, and that jail report is done honestly, to let y’all know what’s going on. So there is absolutely, in a sheriff’s opinion, no reason to expect them to report to audit, Department of Audits, or anyone else in the state on this matter.
A footnote to that also is this. They are, they’re pretty compliant with us, with reporting. We’re asking them to report all sorts of things, mental health, transports, who’s in jail with mental health issues, et cetera. So, I urge you to consider our offer to uh, make this report even more effective, and um, informative for everybody, before we start talking about pushing some sort of report of jail data to, to the State. And that’s really all. We’re not trying to be a, uh, uh, in opposition of the bill. But those are the matters that we have concerns with.

Committee chair:
Any questions for, uh, Mr. Norris? I have one question, uh, but we’ll take, um, Representative Cummings, first.

Representative Cummings:
Um, thank you Chair. I have one question. If a sheriff is found, um, guilty of a misdemeanor of a higher aggravated nature, the way it’s described in this bill, how would that impact his job, or his career?

Terry Norris:
That is not cause for immediate, uh, vacancy of the office. In other words, he, he could be suspended, uh, and he could be suspended under the provision that I said, well, I mentioned a while ago. And that was the two, um, sheriffs and the Attorney General. So if there was a, a charge of a misdemeanor, and there was a conviction of a misdemeanor, then that panel could, uh… and there would be obviously a probated sentence or something of that nature. But the, the governor could still empanel the two sheriffs and the AG to look at that conviction or that case, and determine where there was a suspension. And the sus-, the suspension is 60 days up to 90 days under current law.

Representative Cummings:
Okay, thank you.

Terry Norris:
Yes ma’am.

Committee chair:
All right, Mr. Norris. Let me ask you this question. We kind of talked about this offline a little bit. You, you may agree with this or may not. But if you removed that penalty of, of being a misdemeanor, and maybe added that, uh, it was a violation of oath of office, not to comply, would that be amenable to sheriff’s office, Sheriff’s Association?

Terry Norris:
I, I think much more so, and frankly, with, it’s a good point, because with election season coming up, it really affects their concerns about being re-elected. So I would say so, yes sir.

Committee chair:
So that might be something we could take into consideration to maybe, uh, remove some of the heartburn that you have, where that, uh, that proportion of a misdemeanor-

Terry Norris:
Yes, that would be.

Committee chair:
… is removed.

Terry Norris:
When we were already talking about this. We’re pleased to continue to work with our friend, Representative Petrie.

Representative Petrie:
Representative, if I may. So, uh, I actually brought that up, and discussed that as I went through a multitude of options. I had a little bit of a difficult time [inaudible 00:13:49] council understanding how it would, um, adequately impact what we’re trying to do. But, I do wanna make it clear, we did discuss that, and, and um, Mr. Norris has been most helpful throughout all of these conversations from day one. A year ago we started on this, and he’s been very forthright with me in acknowledging that I think in one conversation, we had, we know that 89 sheriffs out of 159 acknowledge, that’s just one particular point in time, that they were doing this.
But we’ve got 159 sheriffs in the state.

Committee chair:
Right.

Representative Petrie:
So, we, we… I think we, we understand that a lot of sheriffs, but not all for bad reasons, but, that are not doing this. We need to compel them to do that, and yes, to… if that’s what we’re trying to do here. And so the reason we put the misdemeanor behind aggravated nature was to make sure that we do this. I wanna read, uh, I wanna read something Mr. Chairman, with your permission.

Committee chair:
Please, by all means.

Representative Petrie:
This is what I’m trying… I wanna make sure everyone here is, is clear on what I’m trying to do. This is a quote, um, from the Gwinnett County Sheriff, uh, Keybo Taylor I think, on January 1 of 2021. Quote, “what we will not be doing is notifying ICE of anybody’s immigration status in the jail or any of our facilities.” So, again, that’s uh, I mean… you know, so we need to either find a way to require, if nobody else, our sheriffs to follow the law. Or, we need to… or, or we can just, as a body, we can take up repealing the law. Maybe we should say, “hey, sheriffs shouldn’t have to do this.”
But it seems to me, we should do one or the other. So uh, but Mr. Norris has been most helpful, and um, we, we need to find a way to solve the problem. He has been very helpful from day one, in having these conversations. I’ve brought up a multitude of ideas, and that was one of them.

Committee chair:
Representative, Chairman Taylor there, yeah.

Representative Chairman Taylor:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think all, all of us, um, have constituents that are very concerned about this particular issue. Um, there is a big issue and problem when people whose job it is to enforce a law, if we don’t have the rules follow, it permeates through our whole society. And that’s what’s happening. This is a leadership position that is coming right out and, I’m not gonna obey the law. And I think that’s our job, to see that that doesn’t happen. We, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, and address those issues. Um, it, it wouldn’t matter what the others issues are if we, if a DUI? He has to follow the rules just like anything else.
And this is an issue right now that is of concern to everybody. If the law says you have to arrest everybody that’s drunk or whatever the law is, he’s supposed to do it, and it’s the same thing. You’re right, either take it off the books, so don’t have any law, or else, follow the law. We’re teaching young people, don’t follow the law, when we do things like that, thank you.

Committee chair:
Absolutely. Very, very valid points there. Uh, let’s see. Number 16? Representative Cummings, do you have another question?

Representative Cummings:
Yeah, thank you. I just want to know, is there currently a federal penalty if the sheriff doesn’t submit the report? Is there like, a withholding of funds or something like that?

Representative Petrie:
No, representative. Not that I’m aware of. Um, there’s not a federal penalty. And, and again, we’re, so we’re trying to deal with a penalty for a state law. The feds certainly want us to report. They use, and I know, um, uh, the Chairman over here would re-… the LESC, this, uh, that all law enforcement use the, the reporting as I understand, from talking to my sheriff is, is, is very simple. My sheriff who by the way made it very clear to me, we do this, it’s easy. No-… he actually (laughs), my sheriff reviewed the bill and said, I understand it.
So um, I don’t want to be just intentionally punitive. All, I… the goal is very simple. If we have the law, let’s see that sheriffs are doing it. If, if they… I, I… how do we compel them to do that? And if we don’t want that, then let’s just, you know, then let’s, let’s somebody drop a bill to eliminate the requirement. But that’s a good question.

Committee chair:
Yeah, I think, I think that there is… as the Chairman of the Committee, and following you, uh, Chairman Petrie, I know you, you’re very well versed, uh, on uh, immigration and, and those uh, this issue. And, and it’s becoming more of an issue, and I think the constituency around this state, regardless of where you live. It’s an issue in just about every zip code, uh, throughout the state as you pointed out several times. We have more illegal aliens here in our state than in the State of Arizona.

Representative Petrie:
That is correct.

Committee chair:
And uh, just having access to this information I think is vitally important to the public safety of this state. And um, Mr. Norris, I wanted to ask one more question of you. This is not a burden that’s gonna bog down sheriff’s offices across this state, to provide this information, and it’s not gonna be an undue burden that, that’s gonna make it difficult for a sheriff to perform their duties. It’s just simply a, a clerical type procedure. Is that correct?

Terry Norris:
To, to report, I think the bill goes a little bit further, talks about reporting jail population-

Committee chair:
Right.

Terry Norris:
… and um, we struggle a little bit. To an-, the short answer is, no. Not too much. The longer answer is, each jail has an information or a, a data management system. A software system that deals with that jail population, and there are a number of companies that provide that. So, in doing our jail report, which is, will be much more comprehensive than what we’re talking about here, even to do that, we’ve had to stop and get these, um, this data integrated, so that it can be submitted to us.
So I, I… for the most part, I’d say no, but it could be an issue. Dealing, if you’re talking about the Department of Audits, and again that is, is not something that we wanna see happen, uh, we think we can do it better through us. And again, we wanna share that, but I think it would be a little bit of a, a challenge to go within. Unless you’re talking about just a printed piece of paper, this is how many people we had this month in there. We could probably give you that pretty easily.

Committee chair:
Ms. Evans, did you have another question? Representative Evans, I’m sorry.

Representative Evans:
Thank you Mr. Chairman, yes, thank you. Um, and uh, I’m so glad we had these folks here today. I wonder, did the Project South people know about this committee hearing this afternoon? The people who brought us this letter that was distributed? Did they know about the committee hearing this afternoon?

Committee chair:
Which, which letter are you referring to ma’am? I’m sorry, I can’t see that. Project South?

Representative Evans:
This is… it was a, there’s a group who I was handed a letter by Abby, that says, um-

Committee chair:
I’m not, I’m sorry.

Representative Evans:
… so I just wondered if they knew about this hearing, so they could come testify to us?

Committee chair:
I, I, I’m not certain.

Representative Evans:
Okay.

Committee chair:
I can’t speak to that. All, all meetings, all meetings are public.

Representative Evans:
All right, okay.

Committee chair:
Posted, and this, this was on the agenda for the last couple of days.

Representative Evans:
Okay, thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I do have some questions since they’re not here, just that they pointed out, if I’d like to ask the Chairman.

Committee chair:
Go right ahead.

Representative Evans:
Would that be appropriate?

Committee chair:
Sure.

Representative Evans:
Okay, thank you. Um, so in this letter, they as-, they, uh, point out that, uh, this code session, [inaudible 00:21:01] mandates jails to publish a public report about immigrants. And they, they were pointing out that many times people in jail are just waiting in pre-te-, trial detention. And so, uh, uh, the question is, is does this also target individuals, people who have just merely been booked, and have not actually been convicted of anything? So, would that create a ske-… potentially a skewed number in the report? That was-

Representative Petrie:
Okay. So um, so there’s two… there’s two… Section 2 is about the st-, state prisons, and the corrections. Is that what they’re speaking to?

Representative Evans:
This is, they said Section 42-4-14.1.

Representative Petrie:
Okay, that’s under, okay, that’s under this measure. So that’s current law.

Representative Evans:
Mm-hmm.

Representative Petrie:
So, so um, what they’re speaking to is already current law. So the law already requires that, that which they’re asking. This, this, this really is about whether indeed the sheriffs are reporting that information to ICE, but the current law already requires that. And so, to that point, I don’t know, uh, if, if someone is um, it says here, if you’ll look at, uh-

Representative Evans:
What line there?

Representative Petrie:
… line 38. It says there’s a, you know, a reasonable effort shall be made to, uh, determine the nationality of the person so confined. Um, and it goes on to, in, in, in line 33 you see a definition of illegal alien. So I mean, it, this… that’s already, um, and, and then of course, what they do, you see on line 43 and on down, and talks about how, uh, by the way, all over this country, law enforcement reports to ICE. It’s through, um, the Law Enforcement Support Center, and that’s what I was speaking, uh, earlier, um, about. Our Chairman that was a long time member of Georgia State Patrol, uh, they use that for a multitude of things.
But that’s how they report this to the, to ICE. And so that’s already in the law, so I don’t know how to answer that beyond that.

Representative Evans:
Okay. Yep, so but it… so it would just have, it would have people who… anyone that’s in jail. So, ba-, basically you’re saying, so it would include people that have been accused of a crime but not convicted? ’cause that’s a lot of our jail population, right? So-

Representative Petrie:
Yeah, um, and that might be better for Terry to answer. Um-

Terry Norris:
Yes ma’am.

Representative Petrie:
Terry, go into that?

Terry Norris:
This, this, this is anybody that’s arrested.

Representative Evans:
Right.

Terry Norris:
Um, there’s a, in, in place, in a jail setting-

Representative Evans:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Norris:
… there is a criminal history record check, based on a fingerprint. That request goes through the Georgia Crime Information Center.

Representative Evans:
Mm-hmm.

Terry Norris:
They go through the federal agencies, and it comes back to us, that person is either here illegally or not. There’s actually a list of a few things that it, uh, checks off. So, yes, in the case of the sheriffs, the, certainly. These people are being, um, their records are being checked. Their, uh, status is being checked prior to any sort of conviction. Of course that’s the case.

Representative Evans:
Yeah.

Terry Norris:
And, um, jails are created to hold people who are awaiting trial.

Representative Evans:
Yes.

Terry Norris:
Unfortunately we do have people in jail because of criminal justice reform and other measures that stay there. Uh, and that was the point I was making a while ago.

Representative Evans:
Thank you.

Terry Norris:
Right, that’s all.

Representative Petrie:
And thank you Terry. And so, and, and again, the, the, the purpose, uh, is that if someone is here illegally, that the feds have an opportunity to see that. There may be something that alarms them. It could be a, um, an even bigger public ser-, uh, safety threat, or even a homeland security threat. And this is the reason that this is encouraged by, uh, by the federal agency, uh, of all states.

Committee chair:
I would encourage, uh, Representative Evans, if you have, I think, uh… Mr. D.A. King in the audience could make, uh, could help you with, with some of those questions that you have there, uh, about that organization and kind of repeat some of that, uh, information. And you can see him on, after the meeting off, offline if you don’t mind. Uh, we’ll go rep-, uh, recognize, uh, Chairman Taylor for another comment, then we’ll go and-

Representative Chairman Taylor:
Yeah, thank you.

Committee chair:
… wrap this up for today.

Representative Chairman Taylor:
Yeah, this is, um, just wrapping it up. Uh, anybody get, gets in jail is counted just like an occupancy. They’re counting it, just finding out who’s in there.

Committee chair:
Yeah.

Representative Chairman Taylor:
Um, and then further in the same letter, they talk about the officers. They don’t need training in immigration, that’s not what their job is. They’ve arrested them because they committed some type, or they’re suspected of it. And at that point, they have to be held, like anybody else. It doesn’t… they’re not trying to pick on one group. It’s just, if you’ve committed a crime, or have been identified as perhaps having one, you’ve gotta be accounted for. And I, I don’t, I don’t get this. I don’t, I don’t agree with what the things that, that they’ve said. Um, it, it just isn’t.
And they’re not… the officers, they are not making any determination-

Committee chair:
No.

Representative Chairman Taylor:
… on their eligibility at all. Like you said, it comes back on a fingerprint, so-

Committee chair:
That’s correct.

Representative Chairman Taylor:
… this is-

Representative Petrie:
And Mr. Chairman, I’d love to get a copy of the letter, ’cause I, I can’t respond to it, ’cause I haven’t seen it.

Committee chair:
Sure, sure.

Representative Petrie:
I, I’ll get it later. I don’t need it now.

Committee chair:
We’ll get it, okay.

Terry Norris:
Mr. Chairman, just to kind of close my piece out, of it out. On my point, remember. This, this is a check for status, is what this is. These people, whoever they are, have been charged with whatever offense. Most of the time, I think it’s a misdemeanor. A lot of the times, it’s a bad felony. So we’re checking for the status of this person, and that status, once we get the status, if it is one of those things, one of it being in the country illegally, then that notice to ICE goes. We’ve got Terry, he’s not here illegally, and he’s in our jail, and he’s been charged with speeding, ’cause I was a, I was a super speeder.
So ICE then determines whether they’re going to place a detainer on Terry. And, a detainer is different than a warrant. A detainer doesn’t always mean that ICE-

Committee chair:
That’s right.

Terry Norris:
… will ever pick that person up. So our rule of thumb is, we treat these folks like the Chairlady said, like anyone else that’s get, gets arrested. They’re entitled to bond, or to bond out of jail. And uh, with a warrant, 24 hours. Without a warrant, 48 hours. So if ICE hadn’t, hadn’t said, we’re coming to get this person, then they’re, they’re making bond like anybody else does. So, if that’s any clarity.

Committee chair:
Very good, thank you. I’ll let you have the last word, Chairman Petrie, before we close up.

Representative Petrie:
Yes sir, well thank you Mr. Chairman. I just wanna emphasize, as uh, Mr. Norris sits down, how helpful he, uh, indeed again, he has been. Listen, our sheriffs are some of our most respected members of, of all of our communities. And uh, but there are times in certain situations where uh, we may have some, uh, we know we have some that are, uh, refusing to follow current law. I just want us to find a solution to that, and that’s my goal here, and I appreciate you having the hearing, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate Mr. King, I appreciate Mr. Norris, uh, speaking as well, to provide a, a little more advocation on this topic.

Committee chair:
To the members of the committee, thank you so much for staying, hanging around here for a few moments after we adjourned on Friday. I certainly appreciate your willingness to be here, to help vet this legislation. Uh, there being no further business before this committee, we stand adjourned.

 

 

 

The below retyped letter was sent to the members of the Georgia Public Safety and Homeland Security committee last week in opposition to HB 1105, the “Georgia Criminal Alien Track and Report Act” by the “Project South Institute for the Elimination of Poverty and Genocide.” As an education on the politics of this group, the photo above features Project South’s Legal and Advocacy Director Azadeh Shahshahani at a 2016 street protest against immigration enforcement in Atlanta.

More on Shahshahani here.

The original letter is pasted on the bottom.

 

 

“Dear Members of the House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee,

My name is Priyanka Bhatt and I am a Senior Staff Attorney at a social justice organization called Project South: The Institute for Elimination of Poverty and Genocide. I am writing to urge you to vote NO on HB 1105 for many reasons.

First, the new code section 42-1-14.1 mandates jails to publish a public report about immigrants in their custody. However, many times people in jail are just waiting in pre-trial detention. Therefore, this bill ostracizes and target individuals including people who have merely just been booked and have not actually been convicted of anything thus creating a skewed number in the report published.

Second, booking officers in jails are not immigration agents. These officers have absolutely no training in immigration. Therefore, mandating them to be an enforcement arm for The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will not only create more work and liability for them, but it will also increase racial profiling in jail since officers will now have to identify who might be a “foreign national”.

Third, this bill mandates jails to hold individuals for DHS for up to 48 hours even if they otherwise would have been released. There are some courts that have found that to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment because detaining an individual after they could have been release would constitute as a new arrest where you would need probable cause.

Lastly, this bill also targets U.S. Citizens. 42-1-11.4 mandates the Department of Corrections to also publish public information on individuals who are citizens of this country but also happen to be citizens of another country. It does not matter if you are a citizen or not, this bill targets you simply because you are an immigrant. This shows the true interest of this bill: to further increase anti-immigrant hatred in the state of Georgia.

For all these reasons, I urge you to vote no on this bill.

Sincerely,

Priyanka Bhatt, Esq.

Project South

Senior Staff Attorney”

—

Transcript by Rev.com

My cost: $76.00 and about two hours, not counting the day in the Capitol.

 

Rep Jesse Petrea:

… a federal government to control illegal immigration affects the people we represent. And it affects their public safety sometimes. And we do have the ability to do this. We do have the ability to inform the citizens of this state of the degree to which criminal illegals in our state impacts their public safety. And so this bill is about just that. Do we want to make sure that without having to somehow, uh, submit a Freedom of Information Act, and try to discover how, how, how big this issue is from the department, do we wanna require the department to regularly, on a quarterly basis, simply post the aggregated data, no specifics, aggregated data on the degree to which this issue is a problem in this state?

So I’m gonna ask you now to look at, if all of you would look at this list of ICE detainers I gave you. So this is an example, it gives you a picture, basically, of what I want. There’s nobody’s name, there’s nothing. Now, as I said in the subcommittee, if you want specifics, you can look at every inmate in the system online. You can go and get their name, everything, where are they from, where com- they committed a crime, what they did. It’s not what I want. What I want is the people to have a snapshot of the problem or the lack of a problem. ‘Cause some people will tell you, you probably got some folks in this room that’ll tell you, “This isn’t a problem at all.” That’s okay. That’s their right. It’s not my job to interpret whether it’s a problem or not for others. I see this as my job to let you determine the degree of the problem so you can make your own decision about whether it’s a problem.

But I want you to look at this list, and I want you to see this aggregated format, and so when you look at this real simply, I want you to note here that there are, there are today, okay? And again, you may think, “Ah, it’s a low number.” You may think that’s a, a, a … an appalling number. I don’t know. But there are 230 child molesters who came to this country illegally, today, in Georgia, who molested children. Okay. There are, today, in our correctional system, 176 murders in our state correctional system. Okay? Who came to this country illegally first, that’s one thing, and then they subsequently committed a murder in the state of Georgia on the people we represent. Okay?

Keep going down the list. There’s 157 people who came to this country illegally, today, in the Georgia correctional system, who then subsequently raped someone, one of our constituents, in the state of Georgia and is now in our correctional system. Now, you may not be interested in knowing any of that, or caring. You may not believe that that was, as I call it, an avoidable crime. Maybe you don’t think that was an avoidable crime. I believe it was. And so I want this information to be made available to our people.

So I wanna make one thing clear, though, about this list, as I alluded to earlier. As you look at this list of 1,505, and I’m gonna give you an update on this, ’cause I want you to note at the top, this is December of this year. December, I mean, of 2022, December. But I want you to note something. My friends, this is not a list of all the criminal illegals in our Georgia correctional system. It is a list of those with ICE detainers. So let me explain now the conundrum, there. Why do I point that out?

I point that out because of this. I just want you to hear me. This is facts. In 2019, ICE issued 165,000 detainers in the United States. Okay? In 2022, ICE issued 78,000 detainers in the United States. ICE detainers have plummeted under the Biden administration. And in spite of the huge increases that everyone in this country, of every party, recognizes [inaudible 00:04:33] the last few years, there has been a 55% decrease in the number of detainers issued since 2019.

So, why do I tell you that? Because if you only have a list of ICE detainers, you don’t really have an accurate picture of what I’m trying to get at. What I’m trying to get at is how many illegal criminals are in this syste- uh, yeah, people illegally here are in our correctional system? If you only have ICE detainers, you have a subset of that. Now, because I can’t get that number from the department, I don’t know whether this is the … I, I hope this is the majority. But we don’t really know that. Okay? Because as you heard from the numbers I just mentioned, today, many people in the syst- the, the, the Feds are simply not issuing detainers on everyone. I hope that, I hope that makes sense.

So, uh, Mr. Chairman, there’s one last thing I’d like to mention, because there was a good question, uh, where is Representative Neal? She’s not here. She had some good questions. And I wanna mention this. Uh, today’s data, and when I say today, let me be clear again, I wanna be precise in everything I say, yesterday, (laughs) yesterday’s data, there were f- You see 1,505 here, of ICE detainers. There are now 1,532 today, yesterday. And to m- To Representative Neal’s very good gr- uh, question, eight of those are duplicated on this list. She asked about this list.

So there are eight. So there are really 1,524 on yesterday, criminal illegals in the Georgia correctional system with ICE detainers. I hope that’s clear. So there are eight duplications. So by and large, when you look at this list, yes, you’re looking at individuals. But there are occasionally a situ- eight times out of these 1,505, there is a duplication.

Okay. So there’s one last thing I’ll say beyond that, Mr. Chairman, that is this. This relates only to the Department of Corrections. Okay? So this has nothing to do with jails, your municipal or county jails, sheriffs, all of those things, that’s another matter. This is the issue that … This is an issue I think’s perfectly appropriate for us to address, ’cause this is our state correctional system. And the question at the end of the day is should the people, do the people have a right to know the degree to which this is, uh, affecting their public safety or not? That’s up to all of us to decide. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m glad to answer any questions you might have.

Chairman Collins

I’ve got a couple of questions for you, there- [inaudible 00:07:21]

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Yes sir.

Chairman Collins

So, we know there’s 15, 1,500 illegal aliens in this state that are on ICE detainers.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Yes sir.

Chairman Collins:

But we do not know how many illegal aliens that we have in our prison system, total. We do not know that.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Hm. Chairman, we do not.

Chairman Collins

We do not know that. Now, we don’t know that. Somebody-

Rep Jesse Petrea:

That doesn’t mean we don’t know that.

Chairman Collins

Somebody probably knows that.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

I don’t know that.

Chairman Collins

But they’re not sharing that information with us.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

My understanding, and the department is welcome to speak, my understanding from talking to probably the most knowledgeable guy I’ve ever spoken to on this issue, Mr. John Feere, who is a chief of staff to Tom Homan the director of ICE, and two other directors, is that this information is all available, when our, our correctional system uses a, a, a … has a memorandum of agreement with a, a program called 287(g). So when you … You, you know, and you know, I’m not in the system, so I’ll, I explain it the best way I can. When you admit someone you … that … You are communicating with ICE to determine their status. Okay? Whether they’re here illegally or not.

My understanding from ICE is that they, they are going to know who is here illegally or not. Now, I can’t tell you what the department’s gonna say, ’cause we’ve been kinda round and round on that. But here’s the deal. They tell me, “You’re gonna know.” Now, that doesn’t mean they’re not all gonna have an ICE detainer, because again, you’re only gonna have a detainer if the Feds choose to pursue that individual, and for a myriad of reasons, as I discovered from talking to Mr. Feere] and others, they don’t always do that. And they particularly haven’t done that in the last couple of years. Because what the Biden demonstration has done, has decided that, “Well, we’re only interested in priority cases.” So you’re not gonna capture the totality of the problem. So, Mr. Chairman, now, this is a long answer to your question, but I don’t know the total number. But I will promise you this. It is more than the list of ICE detainers.

Chairman Collins

Okay.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

I cannot tell you the degree to which it is more than that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Collins

Any questions for the author, for the bill, before we hear from anybody from DOC? Any questions? All right.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Representative Evans?

Speaker 2:

Thank you.

Rep Becky Evans:

Thank you. Um, so just to be clear, for the, for the purpose of the bill, this … How does, how does this improve our public safety if we have this bill?

Rep Jesse Petrea:

That’s a good question. I tried to answer it in the subcommittee as well, and I’ll do it again, uh, Representative, so here’s the deal. Uh, I believe that, uh, the people should know. You know, we’re dealing with a multitude of issues today. We’re talking about, um, some challenges we have with district attorneys, a multitude of things that relate to our public safety. Um, but in order to, to understand the problem in the realm of public safety, we s- we, we need to know where the problem is. Now, we all know that the, that, that overwhelmingly, because of the overwhelming difference in population, that our home- Listen. We got enough home-grown criminals to keep us busy, don’t we? We cer- We certainly do.

But the degree to which, if, if someone is interested in whether or not this country is, uh, and their … and the lack of following our immigration laws is impacting our lives, um, I believe the people have a right to know that. So I believe that offering information is beneficial to society. That’s, that’s me, personally. Now, there are folks … So the mantra, generally, is this. Uh, beca- And I will tell you, the first thing I wanna say is the overwhelming majority of, uh, not only immigrants, but even illegal immigrants in this country, uh, are, are, are, are, are good people. They’re good people.

That doesn’t change what I said earlier. The majority of cri- the majority of society are good people. But every criminal alien in this country who then commits a crime on our people was an avoidable crime. Okay? And so I believe educating people on the degree to which is this is a problem, helps them to make a more informed decision about whether they care about the issue of illegal r- immigration or not. That’s the best I can answer that. Okay?

Rep Becky Evans:

Chairman? May I- [inaudible 00:11:56]

Rep Jesse Petrea:

It’s a matter if do they need-

Speaker 2:

Go ahead.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

… to see it or not.

Rep Becky Evans:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

Go ahead.

Rep Becky Evans:

Yeah. So, I know you … You know, it’s a good point, you wanna talk about what the problem is. But I, I … One of my, uh, fears about this, this type of bill is that, um, we have, you know, a … We have had a rise in, in, you know, hate, uh, you know, hate crimes, you know, across our country. And we had this incident, you know, in El Paso, um, where a gentleman came in and shot a bunch of, you know, Hispanic people, because of this, you know, huge criminal, illegal, uh, invasion coming across our border. And, um, I’m concerned about the impact of, uh, of, of this contributing to anti immigrant, um, sentiment.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Uh, Representative, I appreciate your comment, but I, I have a hard time fathoming that. I mean, what, what we’re doing is simply saying that the data that is specifically already in … Uh, we’re aggregating the data to show the breadth of a problem that has nothing … I m- I mentioned to the subcommittee the other day, and this is, this isn’t any … You know, there’s this tendency. Actually, it’s an, it’s an, uh, it, it’s routine and it’s done on purpose, to kinda pigeonhole this as relating to one group. There’s 100 … There’s 1,505, here. 150 of ’em, I was looking around the webs- 150 of ’em are Germans.

So we have a problem in this country, uh, by the way, the immigration problem, uh, a huge proportion of it is overstayed visas. These aren’t people com- crossing a border. This … There, there’s an issue. It doesn’t matter where you’re from. The issue is are people criminally here? And then, they commit crimes on our country. And quite frankly, here’s what’s happening. Many of those individuals who are criminally he- or illegally here in the first place, then commit a crime, often violent or sexual, like these, are never even deported after they serve their time. They’re not even deported.

Speaker 2:

Repeat that-

Rep Jesse Petrea:

And the answers-

Speaker 2:

… one … Repeat that more time.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Not everyone is deported after serving, uh, their cri- their time in this country for a crime against our constituents. They aren’t all deported. By virtue of the fact that I just told you, they don’t all of ICE detainers.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

They are not deported. But, uh, but every, every common sensical person I represent would say, “Listen. You’re breaking the law getting here and then you assault our people? You attack our people? You commit crimes against our people?” Surely we could all agree that those individuals should be removed. That’s not the case. So-

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Listen. Uh, uh, I, I … You know, I don’t wanna get in too big of a debate on that, but that’s the reason I believe the people have a right. Now, the question is do people have a right to know the degree of this problem or not?

Speaker 2:

Well- [inaudible 00:14:34]

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Well, listen, the mantra is often, uh, that these people who are mostly good people, that are maybe here illegally, I will tell you, overwhelmingly, good, hard-working people who don’t like, who don’t … who, who oftentimes are the victims of these crimes.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Let me be clear. And I’ve talked to a multitude of people, le- legal immigrants here, who are 100% behind me.

 

Speaker 2:

Number 16.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Now let me … Mr. Chairman, could I say one more thing?

Speaker 2:

Please.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

The mantra from the other side, which has an agenda, is that the only crimes these folks commit are speeding tickets and parking tickets, that’s it. They’re just parking tickets, speed ti- You’re gonna deport people for parking tickets, speeding tickets. There ain’t nobody deporting somebody over parking tickets, speeding tickets. My friends, there’s no speeding tickets on here. There’s no, there’s, there’s, that’s, that’s … It’s simply not true. Okay? [inaudible 00:15:23]-

Speaker 2:

Representative Frazier, you had a question?

Speaker 4:

[inaudible 00:15:25] a conversation.

Speaker 2:

Oh.

Speaker 4:

Please- [inaudible 00:15:28]

Speaker 2:

Who’s number 16 down there? Mi- Representative Cummings, I’m sorry. I was [inaudible 00:15:35] Representative Frazier was there.

Rep Terry Cummings:

Good morning.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Good morning.

Rep Terry Cummings:

Um, it’s my understanding that a lotta times, um, undocumented immigrants do not report crimes, for fear of being taken in and deported. How do you feel that this bill will further kind of, um, increase that?

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Well, I’d, I, I … So this relates only to those already in the criminal justice system, in our prisons, so I don’t understand how it could impact that at all.

Rep Terry Cummings:

Because you’re still gonna have-

Rep Jesse Petrea:

You-

Rep Terry Cummings:

… more arrests.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Say again?

Rep Terry Cummings:

You’re still … You’re talking about people currently.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Rep Terry Cummings:

But there are people coming into the system every day. So the numbers change. That’s why you had the 15 or five change was only ’cause more are coming to the system.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Look, but Representative, my point is that what happens in the, in the community with your, uh, with your law enforcement in the community, has nothing to do with this. This bill is only … So, so to be clear, this bill doesn’t affect anyth- anyone, uh, or anything unless they’re already admitted into the state prison system, not even on a local level. But once they’re there, there is a re- There is an agreement, where we discover, “Okay, inmate number 22 is now admitted.” We discover whether they’re here illegally or not.

And all this does is every 90 days, aggregate the data of the totality of those numbers, uh, for the transparency, for people to understand, that agreed to which it either is, or in their mind, isn’t a problem. So I d- I … Uh, uh, I’m I respect your question, but I, I don’t understand how it could fact- affect them, anyway. ‘Cause all it does is educate (laughs) people on those that are already in the correctional system.

Rep Terry Cummings:

I tend to s-

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Not that it does, doesn’t deal with the community in any way, shape, or form.

Rep Terry Cummings:

I tend to see things, sometimes, as unintended consequences, and that’s what my concern is with, with this. The other concern is, um, you said that you wanted countries identified, so if you find out that a specific number or a large number are coming from one particular country, what would the resolution be to that?

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Well, there is no res- Again, there’s no resolution. This is, this is providing data to the people. Now, you can go on … so, t- to be clear, you can … So on the website today, you can go to the Department of Corrections, and if you wanna spend a lot of time searching around, there’s a … You can click on foreign inmates. And you can see the self-reported home countries of all these inma- And you can see. You can see so much more than I’m interested in. (laughs) You can see their name, w- where they came from, what they did, when they did it. You can see everything about ’em. I, I’m not interested in all that. So, w-

Robert:

But the answer to your question is this, let’s say that, let’s say that you look and you see there’s, ah, you know, 105 [inaudible 00:00:12], 150 from Germany. Those are obviously over-stayed visas. And you see a multitude of others. It tells you… You might see, y- you might see a list of those that are on terrorist watch lists of nations. I don’t know. I don’t know. But there’s a… W- Why would we not want the totality of that information to be shared, as long as it’s aggregated? It’s not specific.

Chair:

Hold on, hold on one moment, please.

Rep Sainz:

But that’s my question. I’m sorry, Chairman. I’m-

Chair:

President [inaudible 00:00:37], you had a question?

Speaker 3:

A couple of quick ones. Um, would you not agree that it’s in, in mentioning unintended consequences, would you not agree, uh, um, that this, your bill addresses the unintended consequences of our, uh, lapsed, uh, enforcement of illegal immigration? This is an unintended consequence?

Robert:

Yes, sir, I would agree wholeheartedly.

Speaker 3:

And in relation to my colleagues mentioning of anti-immigrant behavior, would you not agree that you have faith in your constituencies, and the constituencies of, of the members here that the, that our citizens who are looking at this information can distinctify the difference between those who violate our laws, not once, but twice, by first coming into this country illegally, and then second, violating in a dangerous fashion and creating victims in our nation. And legal immigrants like, for example, my own mother, who I can attest is a wonderful lady and a legal immigrant, who.. Do you think that that separation is clear to the, to our constituencies

Robert:

I think it is representative, and indeed, I met your mother and a lovely lady she is.

Speaker 3:

Appreciate it.

Chair:

Number 10, we got down there.

Speaker 4:

[inaudible 00:01:42].

Chair:

Representative, go ahead.

Speaker 4:

Yes, sir. Yeah, I just want to thank you for bringing this bill. Ah, you know, the information that you’re communicating to the American public is very valuable information that, at the end of the day, you know, we, we should have as an informed… I mean, we should do everything we can to inform the public about all the various issues that, that face our country so that they can make intelligent decisions about how they want their, their leaders to, ah, to run their country. So I appreciate this and, and the information and, and what this bill does.

Chair:

We’ve got 10 members that are going to be speak… Two, two folks out there in the audience that want to speak and give some testimony.

Speaker 4:

Yes, sir.

Chair:

Ms. Stamps. I’m sorry?

Ms. STamper:

Stamper.

Chair:

Stamper, I’m sorry. Ms. Stamper, if you want to go to the podium.

Speaker 4:

Mr. Chairman, I’m going to take my seat back over here, thank you.

Ms. STamper:

How long do I have to speak?

Chair:

I think brevity’s going to be your friend here, because we have another bill.

Ms. STamper:

Okay, great. Hi, my name is Katy Stamper and I’m a lawyer. I live in Woodstock. I only work part-time, so don’t call me for any business, okay? Um, I’ve come here to speak about this bill because I’m very troubled that I even have to come down here and talk about it. We don’t want our country to turn into another country. So as the author of the bill said, this gives us information to know how bad the problem is. And we’re entitled to have that information.

And when you talk about the shooting in El Paso, we have a right to be angry at illegal aliens. We have a right to be angry at our federal government for not enforcing our border. We have a right to be upset that illegal aliens go into our hospitals and get free dialysis twice a week. We have a right to be, to object to that.

I don’t like the idea that this would eve be a question. There should be a presumption that we are given this knowledge. It should be a rubber stamp. Because if I don’t do something that y’all want me to do, I get in trouble and I get harassed about it. Why would illegal aliens be treated any differently? Why would we want.. Why would we not want to know? Why is our Governor Kemp, who campaigned on getting his truck, why is nobody doing anything about deporting these people?

So I would like to know why you don’t contact our Senators and say to them, “Why aren’t you pressuring President Bilen, Biden and Mayorkas to enforce the border, instead of worrying about prejudice against illegal aliens?”

Chair:

Ma’am, if you wold, if you have another comment about the bill, that’s fine. You can speak about the bill, but we’re not going to direct specific comments.

Ms. STamper:

Well, I’m sorry-

Chair:

And I think we all, we all have a reason to be mad when someone goes in and kills innocent people. I, I don’t appreciate your comments there.

Ms. STamper:

What do you mean?

Chair:

When you were specifying that direct from there.

Ms. STamper:

I’m-

Chair:

When you were directing your comments about we should be angry. We should not necessarily be angry. We should be concerned, but I, I don’t think we want to make light of the situation where innocent people were killed.

Ms. STamper:

I’m not making light of anything.

Chair:

Well, I, I take your-

Ms. STamper:

I’m not making light of anything. What this committee-

Chair:

I think your time-

Ms. STamper:

… is doing.

Chair:

I think your time speaking is over with and you have, you have made it very clear that you support this bill, and I appreciate your comments. If you’ll please take your seat.

Ms. STamper:

Sure.

Chair:

We’ll move on. Thank you.

Speaker 6:

[inaudible 00:05:10], Mr. Chairman.

Chair:

The next person we have is, ah, Mr. D.A. Keen.

D.A. King:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the committee, my name is D.A. King. I use my initials because my mom named me Donald Arthur King and I’m afraid somebody would confuse me with the other Don King, so. If I live until April, I’ll be 71 years old. I started coming to this campus in tw-… in 2004 to educate legislators on illegal immigration. And we passed a lot of laws I helped draft, I helped pass, I’ve held rallies. I’ve urged, pleaded, debated and pushed. We have a lot of laws on the books here in Georgia aimed at illegal immigration.

I came today to thank State Representative Jesse Petrea, who is a very dear friend of mine, for introducing this bill. I’m here to support the bill. I run a nonprofit called the Dustin Inman Society. The Dustin Inman Society is named after a Woodstock youth who is forever 16 years old because we do not enforce our immigration laws.

At the minium, I hope this bill passes as it is so that we can at least have a look into the price, the cost, not just the human cost, but the monetary cost of the criminal aliens that are in the state prison system. I can’t imagine, I can’t imagine the upside to not passing this bill as is. Further, I can’t imagine anybody who would try to downgrade it to include only detainers.

As State Representative Jesse Petrea has said, that is a very small portion of the total illegal aliens in the prison system. Uh, Representative Petrea quoted a very dear friend of mine who I’d known for a long time on, on, wh- who worked for ICE. He is exactly right and I’m going to get done in a minute, but I want to say this to all the legislators here. Representative Petrea has learned a lot because he did his research on illegal immigration in a state where, folks, we have more illegal aliens in Georgia than they have in Arizona.

We have more illegal aliens in Georgia than we have Green Card holders. I admire and thank Representative Petrea from here and sincerely, while I look everybody in the eye on this panel, if you will spend the amount of time and show the interest in illegal immigration that Representative Petrea has, I will come to your house and I will wash your car.

It’s very, very important that this bill passes. I hope you’ll pass it out today. I can stand here and speak forever, but it’s a good bill. It’s worthy of your vote and if we don’t pass it, people are going to be asking a lot of questions about why not. I am more than happy to take any questions.

Chair:

Okay. Ah, thank you.

D.A. King:

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Chair:

Any questions? I don’t think there’s any questions at this time. We have someone from the Department of Corrections that would, uh, be, be having testimony [inaudible 00:08:36] after this, before we, we [inaudible 00:08:37] the question on this?

Rob Thrower:

Yeah, I’ll be brief, Mr. Chairman. Um, first I just want to thank Chairman Petrea, ah, for his willingness to work together and for being transparent and honest with us of the direction of the bill. Ah, secondly, anything I say here today, I don’t want it to have any intention of us undermining, uh, our partnership with ICE and the 287 G Agreement.

The folks who work with ICE do a great job and we’re going to continue to work with ICE on the 287 G Agreement. Um, at this juncture between the department and the current version of the bill, there just is a disagreement about the language as it stands. Um, there’s a substitute out there that, ah, would accomplish what the department sees as what it can get its hands on, right now and publish.

And, you know, my intent today is not to be adversarial in any, way, shape or form. I’m just a mutual fact finder on some of the questions that you may have. So if there’s no questions, I’ll take my seat.

Chair:

Good, that’s fine. Number 19, you have a question? Do you have-

Rep Bill Werkheiser:

In relation to what you mentioned, what in, what in the bill would you need changing in order to be in support? You said there was a substitute version, ob- obviously not in front of us. So what it, what areas, ah, is the issue it was, I guess.

Chair:

The substitute is not in front of us. The bill that is presented was the bill that was presented in, in a subcommittee, as alluded by the author earlier in his comments. So if you want to answer that question about what it was the department preferred to be in the sub?

Robert:

Yes, sir. I apologize-

Chair:

We’re all friends here, we’re going to be friends after this is over with. Most of us, all of us sitting up here will be. But you feel free to answer that question.

Rob Thrower DOC liaison:

No, and, and I’ll clear that up. There was no substitute introduced. There’s a substitute that we were working on, so I’ll, I’ll clear that up. Apologies there. Ah, the piece about immigration status, um, felt that the might tie the department’s hands in what exactly we’re looking for with immigration status. Ah, the piece that we could… and there was a earlier version of this bill back in 2019, House Bill 202, that we had kind of narrowed down to publishing the information that we currently give, which is the number of ICE detainers broken down by crime.

Ah, the list that I think you have in front of you that we share with, ah, Chairman Petrea from time to time, ah, that is the quantifiable information that we can grab, or we can put our hands on immediately. And we can put it on our website without a bill or with the bill, but that’s what we can concretely put our hands on.

So, the immigration status was a bit confusing about what the intention was, and what we have, and what, how we could make that work.

Chair:

Thank you. One question I do have for you Rob, if you don’t mind, what’s it cost to house someone in our prison system?

Rob Thrower:

$73 a day.

Chair:

$73 a day. Okay. Wow. Do we have any more questions for the department? Number 29 over here. [inaudible 00:11:55].

Rep Bill Werkhieser:

Thank you, Chairman. Is there no reason that we could not, um, consider substitute, since the department that we’re asking to do this is saying they cannot even do the current version of the bill?

Speaker 12:

Mr Chairman, you have the ability to, to-

Speaker 13:

I would like to make a motion that we accept, ah, substitute-

Chair:

We’re, we’re not ready to do, to do that yet. But at the appropriate time, the Chair will be more than, ah, pleased to, ah, intro-… to recognize you. Number 26, that’s Chairman Petrea.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Mr. Chairman, to be clear, ah, Chairman Werkeizer just misspoke. He just said that the department cannot do this. That is inaccurate. Ah, Mr. Thrower did not say they cannot do it. You’ve heard him allude to the fact that, I think you said, I’m not going to put words in your mouth, and by the way, this young man has been enormously helpful to me. The department has been extremely helpful in every way.

What he said was, “It’s easy to get today.” Remember, we’ve got a little bit of a disconnect here between what I’m hearing from ICE, but this information… So I want you to contemplate something. Contemplate that someone has been arrested in the community, been found to be guilty. They’ve gone through all their… They’re not in our state prison system. They’re not in a county jail. They’re in our state prison system. And then I want you to imagine that we honestly don’t even know whether they’re here illegally or not.

Isn’t that hard to understand? It would seem that we would know that. And of course, we have 287 G. So I don’t think that now, so I’m going to ask Rob, to answer the question. Is it that you cannot do it, or that it is easier to do it with only ICE detainers which would be a subset of those that are in the system?

Rob Thrower DOC:

The ICE detainer information is, like I said, what we can put our hands on. The immigration status piece starts, you know, in my opinion getting into, um, did somebody walk over the border illegally? Did somebody have an education visa that’s expired? Did somebody have a work visa that’s expired, or [inaudible 00:14:06] has ICE identified somebody that’s, um, in violation of some form of immigration law that’s given them probably cause to put a detainer on.

And so, I.. We don’t have that information. When they send the detainer to us, they just say, “We have probably cause that this individual, ah, rises to the level of putting a detainer on them, and, you know, we’ve got the process of putting it in their file and contacting them after the sentence has expired.”

 So that’s where I was going with the, ah, information that we have and what we can provide.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Is that, is that clear to everybody? I’m still trying to process that, but let me come back to you in just a sec. Number 20 down there, is that-

Speaker 16:

Yeah, and mine’s following on the exact same thing we’re all talking about now, is, ah, is your inability to provide the information, or a, again it, it-… This bill would require that, so if, if it was a requirement, could that information then be obtained because there was a reason to, and there’s no reason to get it now? Is that, is that what it amounts to?

Rob Thrower:

Well again, I don’t want to speak for what we can and can’t do under our 287 G Agreement. Um, you know, the information that is requested upon us when we get the email that says, “Can you provide the information of the number of detainers broken down by crime?” I can get you the number of detainers that we have on file in the system currently today. Um, the other stuff, I, I can break it own by crime, I can give you total numbers, but the other stuff is stuff that I just can’t put my hands on concretely to turn back over-

Rep Jesse Petrea:

So would the federal government, you think they would not give that to you if you asked for it?

Robert:

It would probably have to be, and, and I’m just, I, I don’t sit on our 287 G steering committee. But what it’d probably have to be is some kind of an agreement to our current 287 G MOA.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

But that could be done, right?

Robert:

[inaudible 00:16:13].

Rep Jesse Petrea:

We could make that agreement?

Robert:

Yeah, I’m not saying it couldn’t be done.

Rep Jesse Petrea:

Okay.

Chair:

Good, all right. Ah, we’re going to-

Speaker 17:

Mr. Chairman-

Chair:

No, sir,

Speaker 17:

[inaudible 00:16:21].

Chair:

No, sir, no sir. You got to sit down. You got a order. You got a order. All right, let’s see. I think there’s number 29 down there. Yes, sir. [inaudible 00:16:29], please.

Speaker 19:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m just trying to clarify your statement. So you’re saying the State of Georgia Department of Corrections does not ne-… know for sure who’s an illegal immigrant in our prison system today?

Robert:

What I’m saying is that we know who ICE has identified somebody with probably cause to put a detainer on. I don’t know the status or what the reasoning behind the probably cause that they have to put a detainer on him. But I just know they have a detainer. I don’t know the reasons why, for why a detainer’s been placed on an individual.

Chair:

Okay, all right. Let’s see here. All right, no further, no further questions at this time. We have talked about this bill in subcommittee, and we talked about this bill here today. And I know that members of the committee share, share the concerns, ah, that I do and some don’t. Ah, and now that it’s time, ah, we move forward, what would be the desire and the will of this committee, ah, in reference to House Bill 136? Motion made, duly passed? Second? All those in favor, please say aye?

Room:

Aye.

Chair:

All those opposed?

Room:

No.

Chair:

Okay, we’re going to move for division. All those, ah, aye, please raise your right hand for yes. 11, [inaudible 00:17:53] 11.

All those opposed, same sign. One, two, three, four, [inaudible 00:18:01]. The bill passes with a vote of 11 to support it and four against. Thank you all for attending today. We have one more bill. For those of you who would like to, ah, be dismissed, you can be…

 

The Austin Rhodes Show (Dec 27, 2022)

Transcript by Rev.com My cost: $44.00 and two hours

Guest show host Phil Kent:

“You’re back with Phil Kent, sitting in for Austin Rhodes today, and, uh, you can text me, especially as we interview our next guest over at 706-863-5800. We were talking before the news to Congressman Rick Allen, and we touched a little bit on the, uh, open borders problem nationally.

But my next guest is really an expert in this area in Georgia, and this is D.A. King, President of the Dustin Inman Society. He’ll tell you a little bit about how that society got named, and what he’s doing, and I want to talk about, uh, what’s going on with regard to the illegal immigration problem in Georgia.

Uh, we can talk about it all day nationally, but D.A. King, you’re on the air with Phil Kent. How are you?

D.A. King:

I’m very, very well. Phil, I’m glad to be here, and I’ve been listening to your show. You are doing your usual stellar job as a radio host, and I want to add something to the show, and that is, Go Dawgs!

Guest show host Phil Kent:

(laughs) Absolutely. We’re on the side of the angels on that one too. But, um, I know you’re very much appreciated for all you have done in the past dozen years or so, and helping to implement some, uh, not only immigration control laws in this state through the legislature, but you’re also saying, “Let’s just enforce the laws on the books.”

So, I, I want you to focus a little bit on Georgia, and what are you and the Dustin Inman Society doing?

D.A. King:

Well, that- that’s kind of… You, you, you said my, uh… My favorite word when it comes to illegal immigration, which I regard as organized crime. I appreciate you’re saying the word enforcement, and, and thank you again, Phil.

The Dustin Inman Society is a, a labor of love here at our house. In the year 2003, I, set aside my own business and spent our savings, and, and refinanced our house to try to form a non profit to educate people, in- including legislators, and it used to be the media, on illegal immigration.

It’s TheDustinInmanSociety.org. it’s named after a Georgia kid named Dustin Inman, who is forever 16 because his family was hit by a speeding car on their way to the North Georgia mountains on Father’s Day Weekend, the year 2000.

Um, an illegal alien driving a car ran into the back of the Inman family car in [inaudible 00:02:44] Georgia, stopped at a light, and it killed Dustin instantly, and put his mom in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Both, um, parents were put in a… In a coma, and when they woke up, they were told their only child was gone.

Um, and people sometimes tell me that illegal immigration is, is, is a victimless crime, and, and I, I would double dog dare them to tell that to the Inman family if there was an Inman family left. The sad ending to that story, Phil, as, as you know, is that Billy and Kathy were the parents and Dustin was the… Was the only child.

Dustin was killed in the crash. Kathy later died of a… Of her injuries as a direct result of the crash after she spent 20 years in a wheelchair, and Billy died before she did, taking care of his wife and trying to earn a living. It- it’s a horrible, horrible story-

Guest show host Phil Kent:

It, it is, it’s a sad story.

D.A. King:

[inaudible 00:03:40] upset. I get upset when people tell me that it’s a victimless crime.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, I’m glad you’re underscoring that. Think of all the Dustin Inmans, uh, since then, uh, it- it- it’s outrageous, but I’m glad. That was probably the spark that motivated you, right?

D.A. King:

It, it was. Uh, we have a website, The NewDustinInmanSociety.org, but while I’m on that topic, and [inaudible 00:04:00] before I go, but we have something that’s, that’s directed only at Georgia, and it’s called ImmigrationPoliticsGA.com.

IImmigrationPoliticsGeorgia, as in G-A, .com, and- when we have true to life immigration stories, and opinions, and news that are relevant r- right here in Georgia, and by the way, for people who don’t know, Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than is Arizona.

We have more people living here illegally than we have green card holders. That’s right here in the state of Georgia.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

That’s a shocker.

D.A. King:

It, it is a shocker.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, so what now? What is the, uh… What’s the mission now in Georgia?

D.A. King:

Well, we- we’ve been very successful in the last 17, 18 years, getting, legislation passed here in Georgia on a state level aimed at deterring illegal immigration into the state, and what we have learned from watching the corporate funded illegal alien lobby is that if you make it more difficult for somebody here illegally to get a job, a benefit, or a service, especially a driver’s license, th- they tend to go to other states after they cross the border illegally.

And we put a, a large number of laws on the books, and we’re grateful to all of the state legislators in the past who helped us, most of whom are gone now, and what we’re finding is the laws aimed at, at illegal immigration in Georgia, including criminal illegals, are being completely ignored by the people we elected to enforce them.

And I know that, that a conservative audience doesn’t want to hear negative reports about Republicans, but the fact is that the laws on the books aimed at illegal immigration in the state of Georgia are being treated as a joke.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

How can we, um, get these laws enforced? Do we, uh… Do we contact the Attorney General’s office, do we contact our lawmaker, what, um… What is your strategy?

D.A. King:

Well, I’ve been at it quite awhile, I do it all day everyday. Um, as an example, I, I just… You have to go one at a time, as far as I know, and I mean this sincerely. I’m not trying to be a smart alek, but as far as I know, there’s nobody in the state of Georgia checking on compliance of any of the multiple laws we have in place, e- except for yours truly.

And recently, I filed a complaint with, um, the District Attorney for over Carroll County, Georgia. It took me about a year to give Carroll County commissioners to recognize they were in violation of laws aimed at giving public benefits to illegal aliens.

Um, they eventually, after about eight months, slowly started to change their, their… The way they did business, but I filed a complaint and nothing is going to happen, is the short version. But things like this, Phil, kind of get a little blurry eyed, boring to people.

When you talk about jobs, benefits, and services we have on the books, for example, a law that says most employers in Georgia with more than 10 employees are supposed to use the no cost federal e-verify system.

Uh, we, we know that if, if, uh, somebody here illegally can get a job easier in Alabama or Nebraska than you can in Georgia, he will at least try to, to a- avoid us, but the e-verify laws are not enforced.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, and that’s, that’s a tragedy. You know, just as an aside, when I have workers at my home, I, I have to always check, “Do you have e-verify?” And if not, they’re not working, uh-

D.A. King:

Yeah.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

At least at my place, and I hope other people do that too.

D.A. King:

It’s always a good idea to at least ask for, for a driver’s license. That’s a… That’s a good tip. It’s not always… To veer off for a moment, it’s not always an assurance. We do, in Georgia, issue driver’s licenses and state ID cards to somewhere around 20,000 illegal aliens who have a deferral on deportation. They’re still illegal, but we still give them a driver’s license.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, I know you’ve been working with the Dustin Inman Society and some legislators to try to close that loophole, at least have some wor-… Some writing on the license that it’s, um… It’s not, uh, for, for voting, or any other purpose.

D.A. King:

Well, uh, we have, and we, we, we had some limited success in the Senate years ago. Um, Phil, but when I say things like this are, are boring, I can… I can point to something that has a little more direct of wide appeal, and that is the fact that here in Georgia, I’m proud to have worked on it.

We have a law in place that says that all jailers in this state are supposed to use a reasonable effort to determine effectively the immigration status of the prisons in their jail, and report any illegal aliens to the feds.

Now, that law has been on the books in one form or another since 2006, and in the form it’s in now since 2011, when we passed a bill called House Bill 87, um, the law that I just mentioned, and I want to say it again.

The law says that jailers are supposed to determine immigration status as best they can, and report illegals to the feds. Um, that law is being ignored. There’s 150, 160 jails in, in the state of Georgia, and to my knowledge, while I haven’t had time to check all of them, the, the, the lack of compliance is the polite way to put it [inaudible 00:09:31]

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, that’s, that’s appalling. That’s appalling. In fact, I, I would hope our county commissioners all over the state would pressure the Sheriff, the Constitutional officer who- who’s the chief jailer to follow the law, of all people. (laughs) The, the chief law enforcement officer of the county.

D.A. King:

Well, that… I don’t disagree. That’s not happening. I look forward, I know that one of of your guests, I think I heard that you’re going to have District Attorney Bobby Christine on later.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

That’s right, after the 5:00 news, yes. He’s-

D.A. King:

I- I- I- I- I’ve read this gentleman’s, um… His bio, and he’s been a very, very im- impressive official. I, look forward to having the opportunity to talk to him sometime soon about this.

But I, I need to impress upon people, and again, thank you for the time. I, want to make it clear that the federal government has a program that, that allows Sheriffs, or jailers, to check the immigration status, it’s called 287 g.

The law we put in place here in Georgia that applies to all jails was designed to be a plan b, in case 287 g went away. Well, 287g did go away in Gwinnett County, and here where I live, in Cobb County.

But just a couple of, of facts, if I may very quickly-

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Sure.

D.A. King:

To keep people’s interest in this is Gwinnett County, in 2010, or 2009, before the 287g program went into effect, um, the Sheriff ran what was called a “surge”, or a trial test, a 26 day test of, of the efficiency of this 287g program in, in, in which the federal apparatus is used by the jailers to check immigration status.

In 26 days, ICE said they had found and placed detainers on 914 foreign born inmates to put them into deportation proceedings because they were illegal aliens. The numbers in the Gwinnett jail at, at this outset, revealed that 68% of the foreign born population of the jail was here illegally, they were illegal aliens.

54% of that 914 had a previous criminal history, and most of that previous immi-… Previous criminal history was in Gwinnett County. What kind of crimes were, were people being deported?

Um, murder, 13 charges, rape, 15, armed robbery, 28, child molestation, kidnapping, battery, theft, drug dealing. It goes on and on.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, you’re making a good point. You’re making a good point. We’ve got about a minute left, and I want to hold you over from the, uh… The break. Now aren’t there still some counties, and the state police still use 287g?

D.A. King:

Th- there’s the Department of Corrections and the prison system uses 2A7G, and I think there’s four counties that still use [inaudible 00:12:20]

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, I would urge counties to take a look at that because that was a huge public safety tool. I’m talking with D.A. King, the President of the Dustin Imnan Society. I’m gonna hold him over from the break, uh, and also, uh, D.A., I want to ask you about some parental choice school legislation, uh, that, that a lot of people like school choice but there’s a glaring problem, and I want to talk to you about that after the break.

All right, I’m with, uh, Austin Rhodes today, guest hosting. This is Phil Kent, and I hope you’ll stay with us, and don’t forget to text me at 863-5800.

[inaudible 00:13:06]

You’re listening to WGAC, AM 580, it’s Phil Kent guest hosting today on the show, and I want to continue our discussion with D.A. King. He’s an expert in the area of illegal immigration, and were talking about some great information earlier that he has told our listeners about the lack of enforcement, appalling lack of enforcement in Georgia.

And, uh, D.A., thanks for, uh, holding on and, um, being back on the air. Let’s talk… Uh, let’s finish up with that, and let’s talk about this, um, school choice bill you have been telling me about recently.

D.A. King:

It’s m- my pleasure, Phil, and again, thank you. If I may, just, just 20 more seconds.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Sure.

D.A. King:

I, I want people to know that the law that I just mentioned that requires all jailers to use reasonable effort to determine immigration status of illegal aliens in their jail and report it to the feds has no penalty clause in it.

Uh, we didn’t ever dream that people who run jails would, would disobey this law, so here’s some news. You’re probably the first… this is the first time I- I’m aware of it, um, going out public, but I am very, very confident that there will be a bill introduced in the legislature that will produce a strong and deterrent penalty to the jailers who don’t obey the law that we just talked about.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, I’m glad to hear of that. I’m gonna certainly write about it, and, and, and talk about it myself, and hopefully we’ve got some state law makers, uh, in the area in Georgia that are listening, so, uh, thanks for that, uh, D.A.

Go ahead and, and tell us about this, uh, parental choice bill, and your concern.

D.A. King:

Well, there- there- there’s an effort. Um, there were three bills in the last, um, legislative session that were aimed at providing… And I’m not making this up, providing, um, tax payer funded tuition for private schools for people in the country illegally, and it would benefit their entire family.

I’m gonna say it again in a different way. There were three bills under the gold dome that had they passed, would have provided in state tuition… Excuse me. Um, K through 12 private school tuition for illegal aliens.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well that’s a shocker. Now, uh, that was derailed, thankfully, but, um, is… I’m assuming it’s coming back?

D.A. King:

They… The, the information I’m getting is that there will be a push on to do exactly what we just talked about again, and people are calling it school choice, or educational freedom, and I’ve learned that if you talk about this, especially to a conservative audience, it’s a good idea.

So for me personally, I think that the ability for people to get tax dollars to send, um, their kids to a school other than what they’re being taught in the public school system is an excellent idea.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Right.

D.A. King:

I do not think that it behooves us to encourage and reward illegal immigration any more than we already do in the state of Georgia by doing that on the tax payer’s dime.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, that’s right. You don’t want any more magnets, so this is where, uh, you want language to, uh… To make sure that that doesn’t happen.

D.A. King:

We have drafted… I’m not quite done with it, but we’ve drafted language that easily excludes illegal aliens from, quote, unquote, “school choice.” If we take a look right now, um, people in the country illegally cannot qualify for the HOPE Scholarship, the Zell Miller Scholarship.

Um, right now, in state tuition is, is out of reach for people in the country illegally in our public colleges. There is absolutely no reason to, to even consider providing K through 12 private school education.

But when people talk about school choice, the last thing they’re going to hear is anything having to do with illegal immigration, or the fact that here in Georgia, we have more illegal aliens than Arizona.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Well, that’s right. Parental choice good, but, uh, no loophole for the illegals to, uh… To get more tax payer money, and to, to steal slots. D.A. King, give us your website one more time.

D.A. King:

Um, thank you very much, Phil. It’s the new… It’s NewDustinInmanSociety.org. That is our, our main website-

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Wonderful.

D.A. King:

But people are gonna get the most use out of ImmigrationPoliticsGA.com.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Thank you, D.A. King, we appreciate that information today. Best wishes.

D.A. King:

My pleasure. Thank, thank you, Phil.

Guest show host Phil Kent:

Stay with us after the news. You’ve got Phil Kent and Austin Rhodes.

[inaudible 00:21:54]

end.