Jeh Johnson Quotes

It's not like Mexicans have an illegal immigration organ in their body and at 14 kicks off a hormone and shows them how to come to the United States illegally. It's a question of desperation for a vast majority of them.

Hopping the fence or wading the Rio Grande River isn't part of America's immigration process.

There is international criminal organizations penetrating our southern based borders, and we need to do something about it. Secure the border, enforce the law, no amnesty, and go forward with the legal immigration system that gives priority to American working families and wages.

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.

Well, we have a crisis along the Mexican border right now, a state of emergency as declared by a bipartisan group of Texas House members just last fall. You know, we've had almost 200,000 OTMs - the government categorizes OT 'other, other than Mexicans' - along the Mexican border.

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!

We need a human presence at the border and a humane presence at the border.

Americans are rightly concerned about the security and the integrity of the nation's borders because the system is broken. Some are concerned about the possibility of terrorists crossing our borders and coming into our cities.

We do not control our borders. We don’t know who is coming across and we don’t know what is coming across.

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?

I recognize and appreciate the legitimate concerns of residents and officials in southwestern New Mexico, particularly Hidalgo County, who have asked for our assistance, as migrants and asylum-seekers continue to appear at their doorstep.

Our borders are being overrun.

The need for physical border security is a very real one. But equally important is the need to focus on the source of the problem: mass emigration from Central America.

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.

Well, I do want to talk about the challenges at the border. New Mexico, if you will, has become an Ellis Island and we want to take that issue seriously and we're not going to shy away that it presents significant challenges.

Some people say these aren't huge numbers, but let's also remember that our job here is to make sure this doesn't turn into a new route for ever-increased illegal migration, so I want to stop it now as much as I possibly can.

Since President Trump has assumed office, I have learned a great deal about the problems on our borders.

I'm against illegal migrants. Too many of them are dangerous for Italy and Europe.

We have a human rights interest. Then there is the immigration problem. The human-rights violations have caused people to take to boats and flood not only the United States, but other countries in the region, creating great instability.

There needs to be more pressure on the Mexican government to stop the drugs and illegal immigrants on their side of the border instead of exporting them to the U.S.

Illegal immigrants make a rational choice when they decide to violate our immigration laws. They weigh the costs, including the risks of getting caught, against the benefits of a better life.

Madam Speaker, it is time to halt illegal entry into this country. It is time to halt the flow of illegal drugs and weapons into this great Nation, and it is time to secure our borders.

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras have all agreed to send additional consular officers from Guatemala, from Honduras, from El Salvador, send them to the U.S. border so that we can more quickly and humanely identify unaccompanied children and process their individual removal.

And you know, it's not just illegal immigration. Terrorists can come across. They're devastating our ranchers down in southern Arizona - drop houses, kidnapping, automobile accidents, extortion, drugs, the spill-over with the drug cartels. We're facing all of 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.