Mitt Romney Quotes

The other thing I like, in fact, several months ago I introduced a bill to end the absurd catch and release policy where our government has been giving tickets, essentially, to people who enter illegally and then letting them go and show up of their own volition.

We must make clear that if you come here illegally, you will be sent back home.

Our message to the world will be this. You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country. That's right. People will know that you can't just smuggle in, hunker down, and wait to be legalized. It's not going to work that way. Those days are over.

Americans are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal immigrants entering this country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by our citizens or legal immigrants, and the public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal aliens who try to take American jobs, and by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.

No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement. It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.

The hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have unlawfully crossed our border are posing a significant threat to the government's ability to effectively enforce our nation's immigration laws.

No one disagrees that undocumented criminals should be deported.

The reality is that there's heartbreak and tragedy that has struck American families because people that came into this country illegally are now involved in criminal enterprise and activity. We don't have the resources or the will to deport them systemically.

I talked about deporting people that are here illegally. They're here illegally. We either have a country or we don't. I talked about deporting people that are here illegally.

End illegal immigration.

My policy will be to detain and deport every illegal alien who is apprehended in this country. And we'll do it with an expedited hearing process so that millions of illegal aliens are not released into the general population with some hearing date down the road.

Under my administration, anyone who illegally crosses the border will be detained until they are removed out of our country and back to the country from which they came.

[Donald] Trump has been saying that on, day one, the violent undocumented immigrants will be - will leave the country. But what about the rest? What happens to the other 11 or so million, however many there are?

Under my plan the undocumented or as you would say illegal immigrant wouldn’t be in the country. They only come in the country legally.

Illegal is not a race, it is a crime.

Go after the illegal employers. No free stuff. Take the handcuffs off law enforcement. They'll go home! They'll self-deport! The problem today is they break the law. They come across the border. And again, what's coming across that border today are bad guys!

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.

Learning to distinguish the illegal immigrant from the legal immigrant does not solve the problem of illegal immigration.

California has the highest number of illegal immigrants residing in its borders. The estimated number of illegal alien residents in California was about 2.2 million, or nearly 32 percent of the total number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?

These are people - I'm for immigration - legal immigration. I've been an immigration attorney. But people who have come to our country and violated laws, we should not be providing full health care services.

If someone comes here illegally, we owe them absolutely nothing.

The simple answer to the illegal alien problem is to secure our boarders and enforce the law.

Deportation is crucial. Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: Those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave. The top priorities for detention and removal, of course, are criminal aliens. But for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process

The federal government is responsible for addressing how to address the status of the estimated 9 to 15 million people who are in the country illegally, but local and state law enforcement can be helpful partners in that regard.