Steny Hoyer: “Separating children from their parents. Mr. McCARTHY. As we all know, America is a Nation of immigrants. Almost all of…”

“Separating children from their parents. Mr. McCARTHY. As we all know, America is a Nation of immigrants. Almost all of our ancestors came from somewhere else in search of a better life in this land of freedom and opportunity, and we want to maintain that. Mr. Speaker, America is also a Nation of laws. We support immigration, but it also must be legal immigration. We must have the security, especially, along our southern border. As we speak, our men and women at the border are doing their absolute best to maintain both order and decency. Since 2014, Border Patrol has completed more than 13,000--let me say that again, 13,000--life-saving rescues along the border, including many children. We would be naive to think that there are not certain individuals hoping to enter this country illegally and to do us harm. Yesterday, when we talked about ICE, one of the elements that came up was the thousands of gang members that they stop. We all know the most vicious gang out there is MS-13. We know it because we know it in our communities. We see the murders. We see the drugs. We know the hundreds of MS-13 members that they have stopped from being a part of our communities. That is why we had that vote. Simply put, the entire immigration enforcement community deserves our support because they work under very difficult circumstances.…”