Political Quotes

“Mr. President, over the past several weeks, I have spoken about the ongoing crisis on our southern border--the President has acknowledged as a humanitarian crisis--with tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors making a perilous journey from Central America and ending on our doorstep, most often in my State, the State of Texas. In this year, the numbers are skyrocketing again. Starting in 2011 we saw the numbers, roughly, about 6,000 unaccompanied minors. They doubled from 2011 to 2012, they doubled again from 2012 to 2013, and they look as though they are going to double again from 2013 to 2014. We can only wonder at what might happen thereafter unless we come up with a solution to the problem. A majority of these children, as I indicated, come from Central America--El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Under current law when these children are detained by the Border Patrol, they are processed by the Border Patrol and then given a notice to appear at a future court hearing and turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services for safekeeping. Health and Human Services tries to identify a guardian to pick up the child and, not surprisingly, most of them are never heard from again. Certainly they don't show up for this court hearing in response to the notice to appear.…”