As my colleagues can attest, having heard me question senior official after senior official who have appeared as witnesses before this Committee, I have been on a campaign since 2009 to persuade Federal law enforcement agencies to increase…

You should be able to proceed if you can prove that you are not a threat to this society.

You have to have an immigration policy that protects American families from the devastating effects of our broken immigration system.

We do not want immigration policy carried out by our local police department.

I think if somebody is selling drugs, somebody is gang-banging, somebody is out there murdering... I think we should just lock them up.

We can help by passing this legislation that I support and that has been offered for our consideration by the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico, Mr. Pierluisi.

I think the Governor of Puerto Rico has been doing a very good job with a very difficult situation.

This legislation is a wise use of the law, a step we can take now to avoid a bailout or a financial crisis later.

Today, we are discussing how the Congress of the United States can help millions of U.S. citizens without spending a dime of the taxpayers' money.

It is hard for me to understand any principled basis for objecting access to Puerto Rico to the law of the land in America.

In 2012, in fact, the American citizens of Puerto Rico voted to reject their current status, and more voters favored statehood than any other status option.

And I thank all of the Members for allowing the two Members from Puerto Rico, one who actually lives there and one that wants to----

First of all, I think we should use this document because it is a letter written in 1999 signed by Henry Hyde and Lamar Smith and Bill McCollum and a series of other outstanding Republican Chairmen of this Committee, in which they write to…

The Supreme Court is going to answer this for us all. That is why we are a Nation of laws.

You are a politician, right? I will find it, it will say elected representative.

So I just want to state for the record that not our party, but the majority party, has stated and stipulated through this memorandum that they believe in discretion, and that the Administration should use discretion.

Indeed, INS General and Regional Counsel have taken the position, apparently well-grounded in case law, that INS has prosecutorial discretion in the initiation or termination of removal proceedings.

When my mom and my dad and approximately a million Puerto Ricans came to this country as American citizens...

Well, I guess we have once again the, kind of, tale of two cities here.

Look, what we should be doing here is not demonizing and criminalizing children.

The tyranny that exists, the life which is lost in Central America? It is our border.

What we should be doing is we should be having a conversation about comprehensive immigration reform and reforming our immigration system.

Nothing here today has put one more Border Patrol agent on the border to secure us against the border, not one thing you have said.

The protests also expose an equally disturbing issue, that the killings of Brown and Garner are not isolated issues.

Thank you, Senator Durbin for advocating for justice and equality.