October 26 proved to be a busy date for President George W. Bush during his time in office.
In 2001, he signed the PATRIOT Act into law on October 26 and five years later, he signed the Secure Fence Act as well. Both pieces of legislation are still being debated in Congress and on the campaign trail in 2016. How should the federal government balance national security and Americans’ privacy? Is a fence (or wall) the best way to secure the U.S. border?
On October 26, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law, to secure the southwestern U.S. border and prevent illegal immigration and drug trafficking. The law required the U.S. government to construct 700 miles of fencing along the border and add new surveillance by both federal agents and technology.
A decade later, the border fence is still incomplete and the debate around its necessity is as heated as ever. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made its completion a central pillar of his campaign.
Why did it come up?
The idea of building a border fence wasn’t initially part of Bush’s plan to reform America’s immigration policies. He had preferred to increase enforcement, while creating a guest-worker program to reduce the need for individuals to enter the U.S. illegally, and offering unauthorized immigrants already in the country a path to citizenship.
But going into a midterm election year, Republican lawmakers controlled both chambers of Congress and decided to pass legislation to secure the border before Election Day. In the House, the bill passed on a 283-138, party-line vote with a majority of Democrats voting against the bill. Things were a little more bipartisan in the Senate, which passed the bill on a 80-19 vote with the support of 26 Democrats, including presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who will take over as the Senate Democratic leader next year.
What did it do?
The Secure Fence Act required the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) to “achieve operational control of the border” by using a combination of fencing and other technology. It called for 700 miles of double layered fencing in five segments stretching from Tecate, California to Brownsville, Texas.
In areas with rugged terrain and/or hills with slopes of 10 percent or greater, fencing wasn’t required and the law allowed for those sections of the border to be secured by other means, such as by aerial drones, cameras, satellites, etc.
The bill also designated priority areas for fencing and surveillance systems to be put in place, and set deadlines for the completion of projects in those areas. It required DHS to build an interlocking camera system from Calexico, California, to Douglas, Arizona, by May 30, 2007, and to complete the fence for that segment one year later. DHS was also required to complete the fence near Laredo, Texas by December 31, 2008.
What has its impact been?
For starters, the fence was never finished. This was due to a combination of factors, primarily a lack of funding and a change in the political landscape. Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections, and after providing about $1.5 billion for the project in 2007 (the last fiscal year during which the GOP controlled both Congress and the White House) funding began to decline under the Democratic Congress. That trend continued when President Obama took office, who gave a 2011 speech saying: “The (border) fence is now basically complete.” That claim was rated as “mostly false” by Politifact.
While the government has built 652 miles of fencing on about one-third of the southern border, only 36 miles of it is double-layered, as required by the Secure Fence Act. Nearly 300 miles of that total is vehicle fencing (think standalone, waist-high metal posts meant to stop cars), which means that those parts of the border are still very accessible to people on foot.
Trump has called for an “impenetrable physical wall” to be built along the U.S.-Mexico border, which he made point number one in his 10-point immigration plan. His Democratic rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, has said that “we do need to have secure borders and what that will take is a combination of technology and physical barrier.”
Tell your reps
Congress has introduced a bill to prevent DHS from spending money on new facilities until the border fence is completed. Is the fence an integral part of any border security plan, or would building it be a waste of resources? Use our advocacy tool below to tell your rep and senators what you think!
On October 26, 2001, President George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act (better known simply as the PATRIOT Act) into law. The controversial legislation expanded the authority of the federal government to use surveillance technologies in order to prevent future terror attacks in the wake of 9/11.
(If you’re wondering about what the bill’s full acronym stands for, here it is: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. What a mouthful!)
Since its enactment, the PATRIOT Act has been the focal point of a debate between the need for personal privacy and for national security. While many of its original provisions are still in effect, civil liberties advocates have fought successfully for reforms in recent years.
Why did it come up?
Following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 3,000 people, the American people and their lawmakers were deeply concerned by the threat of terrorism. The anthrax attacks that began one week later, only added to those concerns.
What did it do?
Members of Congress quickly drafted the PATRIOT Act as a response by combining three existing anti-terrorism bills. The package received a vote in the House just one day after it was introduced on October 23. The House passed the bill with bipartisan support on a 357-66 margin. Two days later, the Senate passed the bill 98-1, with now-presidential nominee Hillary Clinton voting in favor. Then-Sen. Russ Feingold (R-WI), who is running for Senate again in Wisconsin this year against Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), was the lone dissenter in the upper chamber. President Bush signed the PATRIOT Act into law the following day.
The PATRIOT Act contained 10 sections that were all related to counterterrorism in one way or another. It included provisions aimed at improving domestic security and surveillance, stopping money laundering, securing the border, redefining how criminal law treats acts of terrorism, and improving the nation’s ability to gather intelligence.
The surveillance sections made wiretaps more broadly available through Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts (or FISA courts), which were to be used to gather “foreign intelligence information” from Americans and non-U.S. citizens. The law broadened the definition of what information could be collected to include internet addressing and routing information and voicemail, while a related section allowed for the bulk collection of Americans’ communications. The law also authorized any district court judge in the U.S. to issue surveillance orders and search warrants in terrorism investigations.
The surveillance sections of the bill also authorized “sneak and peek” warrants, which allowed authorities to delay notifying the subject of a search warrant that a search had occurred. They also authorized law enforcement to use “roving wiretaps,” which focus on a specific person, rather than a device, allowing authorities to track suspects that may change phones.
What has its impact been?
Many provisions of the PATRIOT Act were initially supposed to sunset in 2005, but Congress reauthorized most of them in their original form in 2006. That set up another reauthorization battle in 2011, this time with President Obama in the Oval Office. Ultimately, Congress and Obama allowed roving wiretaps, surveillance against a non-citizen “lone wolf” terrorist, and court-approved seizures of records and property to continue. The 2011 reauthorization, however, did impose new limits on “sneak and peek” searches and subjected applications for roving wiretaps to a more rigorous approval process.
But the pressure to reform the surveillance program ramped up in 2013, after Edward Snowden leaked classified memos describing the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection programs. Later that year, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) — who introduced the original PATRIOT Act — brought up a new reform bill dubbed the USA FREEDOM Act. The Senate didn’t bring it up for a vote during the 113th Congress, so Sensenbrenner introduced a modified version of the bill in 2015, hoping for a better result.
The 2015 version of the USA FREEDOM Act reinstated roving wiretaps and “lone wolf” surveillance, which lapsed for a total of one day due to Congress’ inaction. But it also reformed the NSA’s bulk data collection programs, following public outcry after the Snowden leaks and a high-profile filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).
Tell your reps
Should the PATRIOT Act have remained unchanged, like some members of Congress proposed? Should it undergo further reforms or be repealed altogether? Use our advocacy tool below to let your rep and senators know what you think!
It’s difficult to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in this country and to break through the clutter, so we’re here to make it easier. Here’s what we at Countable are reading today:
Early voting “appears to be up significantly as compared to 2012, and that is with 34 of the 37 states with real early-voting opportunities having already received votes.” No ballots have been counted, but several of those states — including some major battlegrounds — at least report which party early voters belong to. The data so far shows that “Republicans are leading in absentee ballots returned in Florida and North Carolina, but not by the margins they had in 2012,” which is good news for Democrats as both states begin early in-person voting which tends to favor candidates with Ds behind their names. But the GOP seems to have the advantage in Iowa, where early voting numbers for Democrats are running behind 2012, and Ohio, which doesn’t report party affiliation for early voters, but has seen a drop in early voting “in the big urban [read: Dem-leaning] centers of Cleveland and Columbus.”
“Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of voters in the 2016 general election will cast ballots before November 8.”
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said at an event on Tuesday that he will vote for Hillary Clinton in November, saying that “Republican nominee Donald Trump ’insults us every day’ and is ‘selling people a bill of goods.’”
The Republican Party’s Senate campaign group is rushing to save Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Roy Blunt (R-MO), buying up TV ads for both candidates just two weeks before Election Day. Both Burr’s and Blunt’s reelection campaigns “are now toss-ups and are critical pieces to each party’s hopes of controlling the Senate next year. Burr is up by about 3 points” over Democrat Deborah Ross, “according to RealClearPolitics poll averages, while Blunt is up a point over Democrat Jason Kander, who serves as Missouri’s secretary of state.”
Seventy-six percent of U.S. adults say “they have ‘a great deal’ of respect for their local police,” according to a new Gallup poll. That’s “a 12-point jump since last year and just one point shy of the all-time Gallup high in 1967.” Gallup found an increase among both whites and non-whites from last year’s poll, with 80 percent of white Americans now “saying they have ‘a great deal’ of respect for local law enforcement, compared with 67% of non-whites.”
“A federal judge has approved a $14.7-billion settlement in the Volkswagen emissions-cheating case, the largest auto-scandal settlement in U.S. history. The deal, approved Tuesday, gives about 475,000 owners of Volkswagens and Audis with 2-liter diesel engines the opportunity to have their cars bought back or modified by Volkswagen and to seek additional cash compensation. It also provides billions of dollars to support environmental programs, reduce emissions and promote zero-emissions vehicles.”
