Janet Napolitano Quotes

The president has promised greater border security. We can agree to that. A literal wall might not be the most effective means to that end, but we can provide the resources necessary to secure the border with smart and affordable measures.

The border is way more porous than it should be, and I think we'd be open to discussing anything that enhances border security.

The Secure Fence Act, which authorizes the construction of 700 miles of security barriers along the southwest border, has now been sent to President Bush for his signature. This piece of legislation is an important piece of the border security puzzle.

Federal authorities do not have the manpower or the resources to protect America's international borders.

Finally, we need more Border Patrol agents. Although Congress has already tripled the number of Border Patrol agents since the late 1980s, more are still needed.

The people that work the border will tell you that physical barriers, backed up by men and women, is what we need to secure the southwest border.

Here's what we know: after the Secure Fence Act, we have built 600 miles of wall and fencing on a 2,000 mile border. What that has done is not in any demonstrable way made us safer.

I'm not against a border wall, OK, but go to China, and you'll see a border wall there. We need technology, we need drones, we need surveillance capabilities, and we need rapid-reaction capabilities.

I think we need the make sure our border is secure, not just from a standpoint of strategic fencing or border slats, whatever you want to call it, but we need to make sure that once and for all, we secure our border to make sure our communities are safe.

I expect Congress to continue to work on that, to secure the border, to invest in smart technology, and in personnel that makes a difference there.

There's a long conversation we're going to have about how to enforce immigration laws. But physically securing the border is essential.

The lack of substantial resources and staffing along the Northern U.S. border poses a real security threat.

I'm on record saying nothing about immigration until we secure the borders. The borders are not secure.

Clearly, border security has been the top domestic issue of the year, and rightly so. Securing our borders is an essential aspect of our national security.

It's the federal government's job to secure the border.

There's places where a secure fence will work, and that strategic type fencing will work. But the idea that people can easily just stand up and say 'let's just build a fence' and be done with it and wipe our hands, and it's going to secure the border, that's not reality.

And now, since I've been governor since last January, I have written numerous letters to the administration in regards to securing our borders with absolutely no response. So we have been facing this crisis, and it's devastating the people of Arizona. And I feel as governor I have a responsibility to protect the citizens.

But my view is that you need a system at the border. You need some fencing but you need technology. You need boots on the ground. And then you need to have interior enforcement of our nation's immigration laws inside the country. And that means dealing with the employers who still consistently hire illegal labor.

We need to know who's in the United States. We need to know everyone who's in the United States that comes in here from a foreign country. And we have to separate the ones who are dangerous from the ones who aren't. To accomplish that, we need a fence. We need a technological fence. We need a border patrol.

I'm in favor of building the fence, and doing everything technologically to protect our borders. But the other way to secure the border, and one of the things we must do, is put in place good guest-worker programs that employers can actually use.

We need to make sure we have secure borders.

Thank God we're going to try to continue and effectively defend our frontiers with the Border Patrol, with the Customs Department, with the Coast Guard, with the Armed Forces.

There is no question that we must do more to secure our borders - but how we go about securing them is also important.

I know there's a lot of discussion about building a 2000-mile wall. I think we need to complete the Secure Fencing Act, but we need greater technology and aviation aspects down on the Southwest border so we can see the threat from the sky. Until you can see it, you don't know where it's coming from and how to correctly stop it.

Mexico secures their border. Why shouldn't we be able to secure ours?