Immigration Detention Quotes

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.

Concern for 'national security' has introduced unprecedented insecurity to living in the United States as a legal permanent resident.

You who are so-called “illegal aliens” must know that no human being is illegal.

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've been to Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney and it's all barbed wire, it's like a big jail.

I would have had a much different story to tell if I had been imprisoned after being separated from my family, without a warm bed and only the cold faces of ICE agents and the crinkly feeling of a Mylar blanket.

The inhumane treatment of families turned an immigration issue into an immigration crisis.

Immigration policy should be set and enforced federally.

Punishing individual immigrants who are deeply embedded in American communities is not the mandate Trump was given when he was elected.

I think we gotta have tough conditions. Tell people to come out of the shadows. If they’ve committed a crime deport them no questions asked. They’re gone. If they if they’ve been working and are law abiding, we should say, ‘Here are the conditions for you staying: you have to pay a stiff fine because you came here illegally, you have to pay back taxes, and you have to try to learn English, and you have to wait in line.’

Our friends, neighbors, and their families have been forced to live in the shadows out of fear of being torn from their families and deported from what is, for many of them, the only country they have ever known.

I am pleased to be endorsed by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Like Sheriff Joe, I believe that illegal immigration is a major problem that undermines the rule of law.

Journalists casually use terms like crossing the border illegally when referring to asylum seekers - when in fact there is no law that says they must use the ports of entry.

One way to sensitize Washington to the illegal alien problem is to make them pay for it.

The global movement of displaced people, many of whom end up in detention without hope, is one of the most pressing issues of our times.

Immigrants are illegal, since once they set foot on European soil, they have violated the law.

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.

Obama set a record number of deportations of illegal immigrants in 2011, but that fact alone is misleading. Obama has spoken in favor of and has urged Congress to pass the DREAM Act, a bill that would allow young undocumented immigrants to stay in America, their home, and achieve citizenship by going to college or serving in the military.

It is inconceivable that releasing an illegal immigrant that could cause a tuberculosis pandemic here in the U.S. would ever be considered as a possible option.

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.

The illegal immigrants may have broken the law, but we have been complicit.

What has changed immensely in America since 2017, the first year of the Trump administration, is the relentless demonization of nonwhite immigrants, economic migrants and asylum seekers from the highest levels of institutional authority.

This issue of border security is not about, about ethnicity. I sit there on occasion with 10 or 12 sheriffs from my district, many of which are Democrats with last names like Reyes, with last names like Herrera and Lucio. And they are crying out for border security as well. So again, this is not an issue about being anti-Mexican.

We must do everything in our power to keep families together, and to use common sense in our immigration laws. Children deserve better than to lose a parent because of an inflexible law.

The children and families seeking asylum at our border deserve our immediate attention and humanitarian aid.