In prepared remarks emailed to reporters ahead of a speech to border agents, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was prepared to call cross-border gangs and drug cartels “filth.” However, during his delivery of the speech in Nogales, Arizona, the attorney general dropped that word.
In the Department of Justice’s prepared remarks for the speech announcing new guidelines for federal prosecutors in immigration cases, Sessions said, referring to cross-border gangs and human trafficking operations, “Depravity and violence are their calling cards, including brutal machete attacks and beheadings.”
“It is here, on this sliver of land, where we first take our stand against this filth,” he added in the prepared remarks.
However, in delivering the actual speech, Sessions stopped short: “It is here on this sliver of land, on this border where there first — we first take our stand,” he said, before moving on.
In the memo that Sessions announced during the speech, he specified several requirements for federal prosecutors to consider during the prosecution of immigration cases, including harshening charges for unlawful entry into the United States.
He also announced that more immigration judges would be added to the bench, to handle an increased load of apprehensions at the border.
Read the Department of Justice memo below:
