Political Quotes

“later this afternoon the Senate will vote on Leon Rodriguez as head of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. While I am unable to support this nomination, this is the prime time to raise some of the issues that are happening on the southwest border. I will summarize some of my remarks. We have an incredible situation, as we all know, happening on the border today. We have had thousands of kids cross the border. In fact, from October 1 to mid-May, there were 148,017 apprehensions. Of those, a significant number--this is just the Rio Grande Valley in Texas--a significant number of those were unaccompanied minors. In fact, there were so many that we did not have the capacity to deal with them there, and many, to the great chagrin of many in Arizona, were shipped to Arizona to process and then released into the custody of a guardian or someone. The Border Patrol and others are trying to make the best of a very tragic and unfortunate circumstance. I do not think anybody faults them for the big burden they have. I think they are doing the best they can. But what the situation really points out is that not only do we have insufficient resources on the border itself to deal with those trying to cross, but once people get here, we have insufficient resources, infrastructure, and policies to actually deal with them in a timely fashion. They are actually released--most of them--and asked to appear at a later date. It is estimated that quite a few do not.…”