John McCain
Speech
San Diego, CA 07/14/08

TRANSCRIPTION
QUESTIONER: Senator McCain, [...] I'm the executive director of the committee for Hispanic children and families. It's an organization that has worked for the last 26 years to improve the lives of Latino children and families and my concern is about, as I will tell you as the executive director of an organization that works on behalf of children and families, and as a citizen of this country I am ashamed of these raids that are separating children from their parents from one day to the next.

My question is to you is, as president of this great country, will you stop making me ashamed and stop these inhumane raids?

JOHN MCCAIN: We will. In all due respect, you're talking about a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself. Of course we don't want anything done that's inhumane and I thought I tried to articulate it—and maybe I didn't do as well as I should—my compassion and my feeling.

Anybody who comes from a border state as I do sees the deaths of innocent people in the desert and the exploitation and mistreatment by the coyotes and the practice when drug dealers send a group of illegals across the border and call the border patrol themselves. The border patrol rounds 'em up and then the drug dealers go across. It's a terrible situation.

It's a failure of the federal government to exercise it's responsibilities and so you see this manifestations [sic] and different constituencies and different authorities—not the federal government—state, local and other governments doing it. I will repeat to you again, I will do everything I can to see that this issue is treated in [...] a humane, compassionate fashion.

That is my commitment to you. These are god's children and that's what I will do. Thank you.

QUESTIONER: Just one last thing—they're god's children and many of them are US citizens, but they're not treated with the same human rights and the same protection as other children in this country and that's what I want to see stopped.

MCCAIN: I agree and could I say, not this previous 4th of July, but 4th of July last, Senator Lindsey Graham and I were in Baghdad. General Petraeus asked us to be at a occasion [sic] of 688 brave, young Americans re-enlistin' to stay and fight in Iraq against al-Qaeda and the militias and the enemy there. There was also another ceremony where about 166—that is the number, 166—people were also sworn in as United States citizens. These were people of them, many of them Hispanic, who were willing to put their lives on the line in combat in Iraq so that they could have the privilege of citizenship in this nation and I'm very proud to have made their acquaintance as well. I would. Yes, ma'am. Thank you.

LABEL: JM CA 7-14 (JR#60) EA - ClipE

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