People who leads law enforcement on a high-speed fight near the border, especially if the pursuit ends in a fatal accident, may be subject to harsher punishments under a border president’s legislation, which is currently on the House ground.
” They’re a great deal”, Ciscomani said in a phone call. The president does a great job of passing senior orders, but we need to codify things in the law.
Ciscomani’s act, the Agent Raul Gonzalez Officer Safety Act, is away for a House vote this year. It was named after Raul H. Gonzalez, Jr., a Border Patrol agent in McAllen, Texas, who was killed in the line of duty on Dec. 7, 2022, while pursuing unlawful immigrants on his all-terrain car.
The act has traveled a long way to get where it is right now. When Cruz (R-TX ) and Ciscomani were campaigning for Congress in 2022, they first became aware of the problem of high-speed chases.
He met with Cochise County, Arizona officials in his parliamentary area to explain the most pressing issues they wanted him to address in Washington after being sworn in in 2023.
” They universally said high-speed rushes”, said Ciscomani. ” These owners are going 100 miles per hour, endangering law protection, but also all the innocent bystanders. There have been instances in which innocent spectators have been struck and killed, not to mention Raul Gonzalez.
The policy passed with bipartisan support in the House last month, but it failed in the Senate under the control of Democrats.
If passed once this year, the policy would be sent to the now-GOP-led Senate and then to President Donald Trump’s office. Under the act, any U. S. member, lawful permanent native, or illegal refugee who leads federal, state, or local authorities on a car chase within 100 miles of the U. S. border may face up to two years in prison and a good or both.
A chase that results in serious bodily injury to the officer, bystander, or people being smuggled would face between five and 20 years in prison, as well as a possible fine.
Chases that result in the death of any person involved, such as Gonzalez’s case, would face between 10 years to life in prison, plus a fine.
Any person involved in a chase would also be deemed “deportable” and ineligible to seek asylum in the United States.
The bill would require the Attorney General and Department of Homeland Security to submit an annual report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees with details of the number of people who committed one of the three offenses, any instances where the fugging driver was not charged, and a list of cases that have been prosecuted against such drivers.
Ciscomani is optimistic about the bill’s success because, he said, it is a” commonsense” piece of legislation that will likely prompt “broad bipartisan support”.
The Border Patrol union firmly supported the bill.
The National Border Patrol Council, according to National Border Patrol President Paul Perez,” completely supports any effort by Congress to pass laws that have real consequences for those who flee from our Border Patrol agents, frequently with a complete disregard for the safety of the public.”
” For far too long, the criminal cartels have operated with impunity by smuggling and trafficking persons and narcotics, to include the deadly drug fentanyl”, Perez continued. We hope to see a decrease in these types of incidents as a result of prosecution and the requirement for minimum prison sentences for offenses that result in death or serious bodily injury ( which occurs frequently ).
High-speed chases are a common occurrence along the 1,950-mile southern border as human smugglers attempt to bring illegal immigrants or drugs into the country and evade being pulled over by police.
For example,  , Gov.  , Greg Abbott‘s (R-TX ) decision to surge state troopers to the Texas  , border , with Mexico in 2021 has resulted in thousands of human smuggling attempts thwarted and a revelation of how many people have slipped past Border Patrol.
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Texas Highway Patrol officers, known as troopers, made 8, 721 traffic stops that involved a vehicle suspected of transporting illegal immigrants from the border deeper into the U. S. between Jan. 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2022, according to data shared with the Washington Examiner through a 2022 public information request of Texas Department of Public Safety records.
Additional 39, 100 illegal immigrants smugglers had attempted to transport from stashes of immigrants near border towns like Houston and San Antonio during the traffic stops, according to the state troopers.
