The Obama administration claimed Sunday that illegal immigrants flooding across the border from Central America are not dangerous, despite numerous reports of gangsters and criminals being apprehended at the border.

On ABC’s This Week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said of the nearly 50,000 illegal immigrants who have crossed the border since October of last year, “these are family members.”

“These are not gang members,” he said. “These are not dangerous individuals.”

At a House Homeland Security Committee Field Hearing on the border crisis on Thursday in McAllen, Texas, Texas Governor Rick Perry said that gangsters and terrorists are looking to exploit America’s porous border.

As Breitbart Texas reported, in just one weekend alone last month, “the U.S. Border Patrol prevented murder suspects, multiple sex offenders, and an MS-13 gang member from entering the interior of Texas after they illegally entered into the U.S. from Mexico. The arrests occurred in the Rio Grande Valley sector, ground zero of the current border crisis.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) also has claimed that illegal immigrants from Central America are not dangerous, even admitting that she has handed out bags of lollipops to them at detention centers.

However, as Breitbart News reported, Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) said at the Field Hearing that he was “not convinced that we know enough about the children that are here” to believe they will do no harm. Barletta “stated that illegal immigrants are flooding across the border because of the Obama administration’s non-enforcement of the country’s immigration laws” and “warned that if those seeking to do harm sneak across the border, ‘innocent Americans’ will be the ones who ‘pay that price.'”

According to federal government estimates, there may be nearly 90,000 illegal immigrant children flooding across the border this year and another 160,000 next year.