Ted Cruz Quotes

I think the Turks' willingness to take seriously action on the borders to stop the flow of foreign fighters joining ISIL is significant.

I have a number of proposals how to tackle this issue of self radicalization. I would set up a team exclusively dedicated to detecting and preventing lone wolf attacks.

There is no priority higher than the prevention of terrorism.

I strongly support the call to greatly expand our human intelligence capability to penetrate al Qaeda and gather critical intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland.

There's every reason to believe there will be further attacks attempted against the United States. For us to spend so much time patting ourselves on the back because we got bin Laden that we miss the next attack would be a terrible tragedy.

You can’t have open borders and win the war against terrorism at the same time.

I strongly support screening all visitors and potential immigrants thoroughly to prevent bad actors from entering the country.

I am not opposed to government efforts to stop terrorist plots. We are still seared by the memory of 9/11, and we should be.

We need a very robust way of looking at people coming into the country... We're focused on the whole concept of the ideology and of the vetting.

It's not a lack of competence that is preventing the [Barack] Obama administration from stopping these attacks. It is political correctness. We didn't monitor the Facebook posting of the female San Bernardino terrorist. She made a public call to jihad, and they didn't target it.

Nidal Hasan communicated with Anwar al-Awlaki, a known radical cleric, asked about waging jihad against his fellow soldiers. The problem is because of political correctness, the [Barack] Obama administration, like a lot of folks here, want to search everyone's cell phones and e-mails and not focus on the bad guys. And political correctness is killing people.

Once we affirm the goal of trying to make sure that you don't have jihadis infiltrating terrorist flows, we need to make sure we're doing it in a thoughtful way that's thinking about the 10 and 15 and 20 years long battle we're going to have against jihadists.

The one thing that might have stopped San Bernardino, that might have stopped 9/11 would have been stricter controls on those who came here.

Apparently we've got open borders. We've got people in this country all over the place that could be part of cells. After 9/11 happened, you have to understand, leadership and law enforcement after 9/11, they really got reamed for doing a horrible job of preventing it when in many people's minds it was preventable.

President Trump has no higher priority than the safety and security of the American people. And he made it clear in this election, particularly in the wake of the terrorist attack in Paris where individuals had used a refugee program to gain access to that country.

We have national security concerns. There are lots of concerns which must be addressed by actually securing our border. And so, a physical security barrier on the border is something we've all - I voted for it, like I said, in 2006 or 2007.

If we want to end terrorism we need to bring quality education so we defeat the mindset of terrorism mentality and of hatred.

Lots of the free world has become weak. When you look at Brussels, when you look at the way they've handled things from law enforcement standpoints, when you look at Paris, when you look at so many other places, no, it's not. But neither is the United States a safe place, because we're allowing thousands of people to come in here. Nobody knows where they're from. Nobody knows who they are and they're coming in here by the thousands. And let me tell you something, we're going to have problems just as big or bigger than they've got.

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.

When our children and grandchildren look back on this period, one question will overwhelm all the rest: Did we do everything in our power to fight and to win the war on terror? That's the fundamental question this generation faces.

The secretary of Homeland Security working with myself and my staff will begin immediate construction of a border wall.

Let me state this as clearly as I can: We are going to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country. We will not be deterred from this course, and in a matter of days, we will be taking brand new action to protect out people and keep America safe. You will see the action.

Whatever kind of device or barrier or policy to secure the border, that's necessary to secure the border, then do it.

My administration is going to stop the tens of thousands of people coming in from Syria. We have no idea who they are, where they come from. There's no documentation. There's no paperwork. It's going to end badly folks. It's going to end very, very badly.

We need to focus on radical Islamic terrorists and we need to stop them before they carry out acts of terror.