George Saunders Quotes

My message to everyone: the next time you hear about migrant children near the border, just picture them as your own. Then think what you would want our government to do.

In 2019 folks were coming across the border and were sitting down, they were sitting down waiting for Border Patrol to come up because they knew they would be released within a matter of hours if not days into the interior of the U.S. and that was the goal.

Thousands of children entering the country illegally have become the face of the immigration crisis in the U.S.

Because of a massive backlog of asylum cases and an inability to quickly adjudicate and enforce them, more migrants are making the journey to our border.

I reject the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the southern border, along which are some of the safest communities in the country.

We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.

The migrants are not a temporary crisis. The crisis is mounting.

This problem with illegal immigration is nothing new. In fact, the Indians had a special name for it. They called it "white people."

The plight of the terrified Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border to escape violence and poverty in their homelands has launched a passionate and often bitter debate in Washington.

We must make immigration a legal, orderly process to eliminate this issue, not further criminalize it.

The recent, single-year influx of unaccompanied minors from foreign countries into the United States is a direct result of President Obama's policies of encouraging amnesty and failing to enforce existing immigration laws.

We cannot afford all this illegal immigration and everything that comes with it, everything from the crime and to the drugs and the kidnappings and the extortion and the beheadings and the fact that people can't feel safe in their community. It's wrong! It's wrong!

Immigration policy should be set and enforced federally.

Migrants don't come to the United States because, as Ambassador Aponte argued in her press conference, of 'lies' told by smugglers that, once here, you can't get deported. They come because their countries have been destroyed by U.S. policy.

It's great that Trump has engendered a heated debate over illegal immigration and our open borders.

There will be no use of military forces in immigration. There will be no - repeat, no - mass deportations.

The only way that we can disincentivize Central American immigrants from illegally entering our country is if we change our policies, tweak our laws, cut the bureaucratic red tape and immediately send them back to their countries of origin. Until then, this self-imposed crisis will continue to worsen.

I wonder how many illegal migrants fanned out across the country while I and others were subjected to the stone-faced, suspicious inefficiency of the Border Force?

After the separation of children from families seeking to join the United States was embraced as the official policy of our government, we should ask ourselves what story we will tell. President Trump's story is one of cruelty - that we may do something unfathomable to deter families from coming to America.

Don't talk to me about civility when you're separating families at the border.

I would not invest in a Trump hate wall. We don't need to be protected from immigrants that are coming here seeking asylum and refuge.

We have to stop illegal immigration in order to ensure security in Europe.

We will deploy our men and women in uniform only where there is a need, and where their presence can make a genuine difference in ensuring public safety and an easing of the humanitarian concerns at our southern border.

People are realizing if they jump across our border and they have a child with them they can raise their hand and claim asylum and they will be caught and released into the homeland.

President Trump is enforcing U.S. immigration law, and in doing so, protecting the well-being and in some cases the lives of U.S. citizens.