Crime Control Bills Amended to Deal with Border Jumpers

Mark Lizarraga

The Senate today passed the amendment to the Crime Control and Criminal Justice Bill. The amendment seeks to restrain a magistrate from granting bail for persons charged with contraband offenses, including those being found in possession of contraband goods. The legislation aims to arrest the increasing problems with border jumpers and contrabandistas. Those persons who are charged will be remanded until bail is successfully applied for at the Supreme Court. Senator for the Private Sector Mark Lizarraga says the amendment is long overdue.

Mark Lizarraga, Senator for Private Sector

“I rise in support of this bill. I repeat it is long overdue and we are happy to see that it is being put in place. When we entered in this COVID reality way back in March, April we acknowledged and we heard and we said that the greatest risk that we face were these border jumpers. We recognised that we had a lot of communities that created their border so to speak and were informal crossing were a matter of culture, practice and was in fact taking place for donkey years. We are happy to see that we’ve finally deciding to put some teeth in penalizing these types of behaviour.  And it is unfortunate colleague that you rightly said that it is an election year because we know of these things that have happening in these communities for so long and we failed to addressed them. We knew the risk. Remember this thing started from March, we started to talk about that risk of border jumping and yes much  has been done and kudos to the efforts that were done and I hate to sound like it is Monday morning quarter backing but more should have and could have been done. And now today after the horse is out of the gate we are trying to now put in what many will define as draconian but I believe that they are measures that we have to take.”

Michael Peyrefitte

Michael Peyrefitte, U.D.P. Senator

“I heard Senator Lizarraga agree, support the bill. I also heard him say that we should have done it a long time ago and we took too long. But I also have to respond to that by saying this” of we took too long I am assuming that you already had this idea. And if you had this idea, why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you put forward a no bail idea for border jumpers? Why wait until the government does it for you to come and now criticize us for taking too long. So what I suggest if any of who in this chamber has a brilliant idea don’t wait for the government to come with it here and then you support it and criticize it at the same time or criticize it for taking too long. Let’s hear your idea.”