276 Quotes by Michael Chertoff

The second is there are some communities that we thought originally would take mobile homes that have decided they don't want them. And we're not going to cram mobile homes down the throats of communities in Louisiana and the Gulf - and other parts of the Gulf Coast.

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

The tenor of his discussions on Monday . . . was, this was bad, but it could have been worse, ... There was not a report to me until the following morning that there was a significant breach of the 17th Street levee.

received little or no assistance from the United States.

People have got to take some responsibility for preparing themselves, ... That means you get yourself three days' worth of food, three days' worth of water; you get yourself flashlights, batteries, either a hand-crank radio or a battery-powered radio, a first-aid kit precisely because you know it's going to take 48 to 72 hours to be able to fully service everyone.

Our department must drive improvement with a sense of urgency. . . . We as a department must be nimble and decisive, ... We will be straightforward. If something goes wrong, we will not only acknowledge it, we will correct it.

Admiral Allen has my full support in the very difficult work we have ahead,

State and local authorities have the principal, first-line-of-response obligation, with respect to a disaster of this kind, ... Obviously, the law recognizes they can't do it themselves.

The one thing about an episode like this is if you talk to someone and you get a rumor or you get someone's anecdotal version of something, I think it's dangerous to extrapolate it all over the place.