Cheryl Little Quotations

Military personnel were telling us at the time -- they're trained to fight -- they're not trained to run a refugee camp.

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'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.

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.

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.

It's pretty obvious that the intent of the government is to detain more and more people and to expedite their removal.

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.

I haven't seen this level of fear in the immigrant community in the past two decades.