Henry Bonilla Border Quotations

I can recall back in 1998, in August of that year, when we had a horrible disaster along the Mexican border in the town of Del Rio. At the time, FEMA was the shining star of the federal government. It's now perceived as many to be the dullest knife in the drawer. Right or wrong, that's the perception.

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.

But again, to dealing with border security, is an issue that - it's like having a fire in the back of your house that you need to put out first before you talk about who, who you're going to let in the front door.

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.

This outrageous action is crippling border security in Texas, ... We demand that these agents be returned to Texas immediately.