Political Quotes

“Again, I would like to thank the gentleman from New York for yielding and to expound on some of the points that the gentlelady from Texas made in regards to the tremendous progress that has been made on strengthening the border. She touched on the doubling of the number of Border Patrol agents from 10,000 to 21,000 agents in just the past year. That's a doubling since 2004 of resources. And this is tremendous in that it actually is the largest per year enforcement of any other federal law enforcement combined. It's $17.6 billion worth of enforcement on our border. And so progress has been made. And the deportations signify that. Half of these deportations have been to individuals who committed crimes, illegal crimes, and were deported for that reason. But let me also touch on another element, which the gentlelady also discussed. And that is immigration, and the history of immigration policy in our country has always focused on the family and keeping the family together and reuniting family members. And so we have to be careful when we talk about deportation, what that means for individuals, because this is a human rights issue. In my district, in Congressional District 4, I met with a group of citizens on Sunday before the President came, and there was one family there who explained to me a situation where the mother had been deported and the children now are in foster care. They cannot be reunited with their family because of the status issues.…”