Alexander Acosta Quotes
As a former prosecutor, I will always be on the side of the law and not any particular constituency.
United States, Congress, Senate, Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Nomination of R. Alexander Acosta to Serve as Secretary of Labor. Government Publishing Office, 22 Mar. 2017.
The Senator was arguing against a bill to correct an aspect of the immigration law where infants and very young clildren are broght to the United States by parents who entered illegally. The children grow up in the United States—the only country and home that they have ever known. American law required that they be deported to “their countries” which they have no memory of and many do not even speak the language or know the culture. Sessions, is an example of the view that law defines justice. Therefore laws cannot be unjust nor can enforcing the law. Opponents point out that even in the United States we have, in earlier times, “enforced the law” which we came to regret and see as an injustice. The Fugitive slave laws, the Southern racial discrimination laws, and the law allowing Japanese American Citizens to be interned and lose their land during WWII are a few examples of laws, the enforcement of which is seen by most Americans as having been unjust. The execution of “witches” in early America was in conformity with the law.
Rene Alexander Acosta is an American attorney and politician, who served as the 27th United States Secretary of Labor from 2017 to 2019. President Donald Trump nominated Acosta to be Labor Secretary on February 16, 2017, and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 27, 2017.
