Sen. Jeff Sessions gave a full-throated defense of Sen. Ted Cruz at an event Friday in Daphne, Alabama. Cruz is facing attacks from Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and others over technical issues regarding amendments to a 2013 immigation reform bill which never passed.



"People need to remember this, because this election is going to decide, the crowd who pushed that bill," Sessions said. "Will they be in the White House, and allowed to push their agenda, or will we have somebody else?"



"Remember after the 2006 battle, people started sending bricks to Congress, to build a wall with... The switchboards were shutdown, millions of Americans were calling. And when we finally had a vote, only 46 voted for it. The people spoke and the Congress, although it was dicey, they listened."



"In 2013 they spent a billion and a half dollars to promote this legislation, the political consultants, they had pollsters hired to spin the numbers, they had special interest groups, they met for months, the gang of eight, they were determined, it was a near on thing, it was a worse bill than the 2007 bill. It gave amnesty first... We voted more than once to build a fence, do we have a fence?"



"So it came before the Senate, and the gang of eight met every day, they also had been meeting for months with the special interests and activists, the la Raza group, the ACLU, and businesses who want more and more cheap labor."



"They had a scheme -- a plan to vote down every amendment no matter what the amendment was. They did it because they said they had acheived a delegate balance between enforcement, and they had the perfect bill... Every amendment was voted down by every Democrat and a number of Republicans. it was a tense."



"It was that close to being passed... and I think I can say this with integrity. Without the vigorous opposition of Ted Cruz, this bill likely would have passed."