Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of Mr. Deutch and Mr. Foster's amendment. I think it is absolutely astonishing. We can have a conversation about different people who are here undocumented and whether or not they ought to be in detention and whether or not they have a criminal record and whether they're a danger to our country, but to say that 34,000 beds have to be filled no matter what is so un-American. It's so un-American to say we're going to build X number of prison cells and then, no matter what the law says, we're going to fill them. We start with the need to fill the cell? What the Deutch-Foster amendment would do would be to strike that mandate. It doesn't strike the idea that some people are going to be detained. It just strikes the idea that we have to fill what Janet Napolitano, who is the Homeland Security Secretary, just said is arbitrary. These mandated levels effectively mean that ICE, our immigration system, can't make detention decisions based on risk to our country, to our people, the various agency priorities. Its officers have to focus instead on filling daily quotas. And as a result, growing numbers of immigrants are held in detention. In fiscal year 2011 alone, ICE detained 429,000 people. Let's talk about those people. Some of them are dangerous criminals, but most are not. Over half of the immigrants detained in 2009 and 2010 had zero criminal history. Of those who did, about 20 percent had only traffic violations.…”