Michael Chertoff Illegal Quotations

It would be enormously difficult if we were to attempt to control illegal immigration at the border without having some legal avenue to address the fact that there is a high demand for non-U.S. people to come in and perform certain kinds of jobs,

Return every single illegal entrant -- no exceptions,

Our goal at DHS is to completely eliminate the 'catch and release' enforcement problem, and return every single illegal entrant,

We cannot hermetically seal 7,000 miles of land borders and keep out 100 percent of illegal crossers, ... But we can create such a high likelihood of interdiction that it will have a strong and unequivocal deterrent effect on those who wish to cross illegally.

I define control to mean that we will have an extremely high probability of detecting, responding to and interdicting illegal crossings of our borders.

Completing the Border Infrastructure System will strengthen our efforts to reduce illegal entry to the United States. Congress provided us the authority to ensure this project is completed, and I intend to use it,