I haven't seen this level of fear in the immigrant community in the past two decades. |
If I were an immigrant without papers, I wouldn't be hanging around down there. It's a place where border patrol is likely to target. |
It's pretty obvious that the intent of the government is to detain more and more people and to expedite their removal. |
Military personnel were telling us at the time -- they're trained to fight -- they're not trained to run a refugee camp. |
They're not from a Communist country, and so folks tend to assume they're just economic refugees. They don't have the kind of political clout that a lot of other groups have. And frankly, I think the color of their skin has a lot to do with it. |
We are needlessly putting innocent lives at risk. Our Coast Guard is being put in the untenable position of endangering lives in order to keep people from reaching our shores. |
We think it's imperative they're released. They'd have a much better opportunity to find attorneys. The cards are really stacked against them. |
We're very concerned that many immigrants are being taken advantage of and relying on these documents to their detriment. |
We've closed over 47,000 cases since we opened our doors in early 1996, and it's never been my understanding that's why a family came here. They come here to escape political persecution, or to make a better life for themselves -- not to have a U.S.-born-citizen child who can apply for the parent to become a citizen 21 years later. |