Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz tells radio host Jan Mickelson that the Obama administration’s reckless and callous policy of releasing hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal aliens and refusing to deport millions more “will end” if he should be elected president.

Mickelson said Cruz is in “the right time and the right place” to discuss sanctuary cities, given that a vote on legislation called Stop Sanctuary Policies Protect American’s Act will take place this week.

“It does two things,” Cruz said.

Number one, it strips federal funding of any sanctuary cities. So if you have a city, typically led by a Democrat[ic] mayor and a Democrat[ic] city council, that declares they are going to fight federal immigration laws, that they’re going to oppose enforcing the immigration laws, than the federal government is not going to be sending them any money. And I think if we pass that into law, it will have a powerful effect ending the lawlessness of these local-elected Democrats. And the second component of this is Kate’s Law, which is the legislation I introduced in the senate. That provides any illegal alien that has been deported who comes back who has an aggravated felony, that individual faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison. We’re going to vote on both of those next week in the Senate.

Existing law already provides sentences to previously-deported illegal aliens with aggravated felonies of up to 20 years in prison, as conservative author Ann Coulter points out. Kate’s Law would make serving five years a mandatory minimum.

How this legislation is expected to succeed — especially when paired with defunding hundreds of sanctuary jurisdictions, which most Republicans and all Democrats in the Senate can be counted on to vote against — isn’t clear. (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio can likely be counted on as “absent.”) Cruz himself has declared that it’s Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies who lead the charge against conservatives and the popular initiatives they push.

The non-partisan Center for Immigration Studies estimated there are more than 340 sanctuary jurisdictions in the U.S. — and the numbers are growing. A vast network of sanctuaries exists to protect violent immigrants, most of whom come from the Third World, but there are no such refuges for their American victims.

“We were all horrified at the murder of Kate Steinle just a couple of months ago,” Cruz said.

Yet that’s an example where San Francisco, the federal government issues a detainer and asks them will you hold temporarily this illegal alien who is a criminal so that we can process him and deport him. San Francisco says, ‘No, we welcome illegal aliens including… violent criminal illegal aliens to our city,’ and so the numbers in terms of cities that refuse to honor detainers will all be publicly reported. That’s part of this legislation, so that anyone can go look at the website and see what their city is doing and just how many criminal illegal aliens their city has released.

“The city of Des Moines has never declared itself a sanctuary city. However, various members of law enforcement here have publicly stated that they will not do the 287 or 387 G agreements; I can’t remember the number at the moment,” Mickelson added. “They’ve expressed the outspoken desire not to enforce immigration laws and not to cooperate.”

“It is a problem, Jan, that we’re seeing it across the country — and not only is it local cities, which are an enormous problem, but it’s true at the federal government level, too,” Cruz replied. “The Obama administration in 2013 released over 103,000 violent, criminal illegal aliens including 196 murderers. Including nearly 400 illegal aliens convicted of sexual assault.

“And that’s one of the things I pledged, if I am elected President, that will end,” he continued. “The federal government will stop releasing violent criminal illegal aliens. It’s indefensible. It’s lawless. We’re seeing cities doing it, and sadly, we’re seeing the Obama administration doing it as well.”

Email Katie at kmchugh@breitbart.com.