Rep. Ted Poe on Monday praised Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's ban on sanctuary cities, saying it's focused on criminal illegal immigrants, and those officials who would protect them.
In a Newsmax TV interview on "The Joe Pags Show," the Texas Republican and former judge said no public official is above the law.
"What Gov. Abbott is trying to do is to go after those people in the United States who have committed criminal violations in the United States," he said. "That's what [Immigration Customs Enforcement] wants to go after, that's what he wants to go after, and those are the people we're talking about that are in our prisons and in our jails."
"Giving sanctuary to those people and not allowing ICE to come to the county jail and pick up those people and get them back to where they came from is wrong and now it's against the law," he added.
"[You've] got to obey the law, no matter who you are."
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Poe also decried the lack of funding in a budget deal for construction of a southern border wall, saying it's needed to keep reducing the numbers of illegal entrants.
"Let's start erecting barriers, whatever we need to do and including fiber optics under the ground, which we can do, detect things that come across the border…" he said. "We're not doing those now. Put more boots on the ground, using the National Guard, and we need more boats in the water in the Rio Grande."
"If we start doing that, we'll see those numbers stay down, I believe, when we actually mean what we say."
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