Zoe Lofgren: “I just want to close by posing some of the questions that this bill does not deal with and that I think should command…”

“I just want to close by posing some of the questions that this bill does not deal with and that I think should command our attention. In this case, we had an individual who had a criminal record. He had attempted to enter the United States, was apprehended, deported, was prosecuted and convicted for illegal entry after removal. After serving over 4 years for the last felony prosecution, he was ready to be deported, but they found, even though he had been deported many times before with an outstanding bench warrant from 1995 where the underlying offense was marijuana possession, all of a sudden, this year, he was sent to San Francisco. I think one of the questions we need to ask is: What is the process of outstanding warrants and its interface with the Bureau of Prisons when someone really should be deported? Apparently, there was no communication between the Federal Government and the prosecuting attorney in San Francisco. He was sent to, apparently, San Francisco, but the district attorney did not see this matter until he was already in custody. Now, I don't fault the district attorney for not prosecuting on a 20- year-old marijuana possession case. Where would you find the witnesses? And, in fact, in California today, marijuana possession is an infraction, not a misdemeanor. But the point is he should never have been in San Francisco to begin with.…”