José E. Serrano: “Reclaiming my time, it's just, with all due respect to my brother, Mr. Rogers, it's just bad policy. It is not the way…”

“Reclaiming my time, it's just, with all due respect to my brother, Mr. Rogers, it's just bad policy. It is not the way to get at an issue. We are now dealing with the Senate, and we will be dealing in the House with an immigration reform bill. We will eventually deal with that issue. In the meantime, we have other business to take care of in this country, other protections to offer to our citizens. To have the local police officer, on top of the fact that they're busy already, now you're going to give them another assignment. But to have them enforce immigration law, I can't tell you how much all the people I speak to say they don't want that. They want the freedom to get information at all levels of the community and not be seen as an immigration officer. There used to be a bad joke about somebody would come into a restaurant and yell out 'immigration' and a lot of people would leave and jump out the window. And that's funny, and it's sad at the same time. But if you adjust that to a police department in a neighborhood looking for information and having people run away from them because they see them as immigration enforcement agents, then we lose the opportunity to really protect our communities.”