Rep. Gutierrez (D-IL): need policy for 5 million American children of undocumented parents

This morning on Starting Point, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) spoke with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien about his support for Gabino Sanchez, who faces a deportation hearing in North Carolina and President Obama’s record on deportation.

Gutierrez says, “The Obama administration says we want to make a change. We want to shift. We want to shift our focus to violent criminals, to gang bangers, to drug dealers, rapists, murderers, and not people like this man….”

O’Brien responds, “When they stopped [Sanchez], it turned out he didn’t have a driver’s license. Plenty of people would say — and he’s not in the country with documents, all those things, he should be gone.”

Gutierrez answers, “Well, [Sanchez] didn’t run a red light. He was given a ticket for one thing, and that was driving without a driver’s license. And he was pulled over as he was pulling into the home that he owns, Soledad. Here’s somebody undocumented, coming to this country, has two American citizen children. As we try to prioritize our limited resources to go after bad people in our society that do harm, we should do. And that’s what Barack Obama’s administration said it was going to do. It was going to prioritize that.”

He continues, “There are five million American citizen children whose parents are undocumented in this country. We need to have a policy that allows American citizen children to have parents to raise them. “

Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien airs week mornings from 7-9am ET on CNN.