OLYMPIA – People who have sex with animals should face a felony conviction for animal cruelty, says a Republican senator pushing for a ban on bestiality.
Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, is sponsoring the bill, which was prompted by a widely publicized Washington state case in which a man died of injuries suffered while having sex with a horse. The measure was taken up Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Washington is one of 14 states where bestiality is not explicitly prohibited, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
D.C.: Illegal immigrant removal to be sped up
Federal agents say they will speed up the removal of illegal immigrants caught near the northern U.S. border, extending a program already in effect along the Mexican border.
The practice called “expedited removal” speeds up the pace of deportations and makes it less likely that illegal immigrants will slip into the country because immigrant detention centers lack space.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the program part of a nationwide effort to “implement new tactics throughout the U.S. in order to gain control of our borders.”
Expedited removal has already cut the average length of detentions along the southern border from 90 days to 19 days, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Homeland Security Department.
From Herald news services
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