In this paper, the stability problem of bilateral tele-operation systems with data sampling and communication time delays is considered. Two buffers are introduced in the bilateral teleoperation control framework to deal with the issue that the information transmitted between the master and slave sides suffer from time-varying delays. The mathematical model of bilateral teleoperation systems based on data sampling is presented. A stability criterion is proposed by using the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional method. An example of one degree of freedom bilateral teleoperation system is provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.