Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz argued “the Democratic Party supports illegal immigration” on Tuesday’s “On the Record” on the Fox News Channel.

Cruz said that sanctuary cities were a “persistent problem” where “you’ve got, often Democratic, mayors who are elected from the far left and who decline enforce the law. Now, it varies in terms of how brazen it is. It’s not always as brazen as San Francisco is, but it’s a problem when you have cities that are in the control of the Democrats and don’t want to follow the law.” And “they disagree with the law, and so they’re ignoring it.” Before touting legislation to cut off federal funding with sanctuary cities.

Cruz was then asked why the federal government has not passed legislation to force compliance with the law, he responded, “Well, it’s because the Democratic Party supports illegal immigration. … They don’t even call it illegal immigration. They’ve come up with this ‘undocumented’ term because they don’t acknowledge — I’m reminded of a famous exchange where Sonny Bono, years ago — remember the former congressman? Was asked, ‘What’s your view on illegal immigration?’ He said [paraphrasing] ‘Well, It’s illegal, isn’t it?’ In 2013, the Obama administration released 36,000 criminals, people with criminal convictions who were illegal aliens. They released them publicly, 116 of them were murderers, they had homicide convictions. Over 15,000 of the criminal aliens the Obama administration released had convictions for drunk driving. These are Democrats that are endangering the security of this country by refusing to follow our laws, and it’s wrong.”

He also commented on the Iran deal, stating, “It is catastrophic. If it goes through, it will result in funding terrorism. It will endanger the lives of Americans. It will endanger Israel.” And vowed to “repudiate it on day one” if elected president.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett