Jodey Arrington: “As a Representative of the great State of Texas, I want to first acknowledge and preface my remarks with the fact that…”

“As a Representative of the great State of Texas, I want to first acknowledge and preface my remarks with the fact that most people that are entering these United States illegally are doing so because they want a better life for their families. That said, it doesn't make it right. As has been said, and I have said it before, we are a nation of immigrants for sure, all of us, but we are also a nation of laws. When the Federal Government abdicates its responsibility to secure our border and enforce our immigration laws, we not only fail in our sacred duty to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, but we put American lives at risk. 121, that is the number of lives that have been lost from 2010 to 2014, lives that could have been saved if we had the political courage to enforce our immigration laws regarding criminal aliens. Here is something even more outrageous. Of the over 36,000 criminal aliens released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody over the course of a year, 1,000 of them were reconvicted of another crime. These avoidable, tragic deaths from violent crimes continue to happen across the country, and many of the criminal aliens who have committed them have found refuge in our Nation's sanctuary cities. These are lawless cities, let's be clear, cities whose actions undermine the basic American tenet that we are a nation of laws, not of men.…”