Political Quotes

“American citizens in the Caribbean are facing a security crisis. While the national murder rate has declined in recent decades, the number of homicides in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands remains unacceptably high. Since 2008, the murder rate in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands has been about five times the national average and about twice as high as that of any State. Most of the murders committed in Puerto Rico and the USVI are linked to the drug trade. As Attorney General Holder and other officials have acknowledged, the Federal Government's effort to prevent traffickers from transporting drugs across our Nation's southwest border is causing traffickers to turn increasingly to the Caribbean to ship drugs into the United States. As the National Drug Intelligence Center recently observed, violence by traffickers in the two territories has ``become indiscriminate, endangering the lives of . . . innocent bystanders.'' In response to questions I posed, Attorney General Holder recently called drug-related violence in Puerto Rico and in the USVI a national security issue that we must confront. At my urging, Congress has also taken notice of the problem, directing Federal law enforcement agencies on three separate occasions to devote more attention to the Caribbean region. According to briefings provided to my office, 70 to 80 percent of the cocaine that enters Puerto Rico is transported to the U.S. mainland. Because Puerto Rico is a U.S.…”