Members of the media interview United States Senator Ted Cruz during the Grassroots America – We the People's Northeast Texas Conservative Superstars 2018 Primary Election Kick-off held on Saturday Jan. 27, 2018 at Rio Neches Cattle Company in Tyler, Texas. Cruz and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of Texas spoke and other Grassroots America-endorsed candidates attended the event such as U.S. Congressional candidate Jason Wright, State Representative Matt Schaefer, District Attorney candidate Jacob Putman, and 321st District Court Judicial candidate Robert Wilson. (Sarah A. Miller/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

Sen. Ted Cruz said Saturday he would not support the bipartisan deals being brokered in Congress that could allow some undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

“I understand it’s easy for folks in the media to advocate for amnesty,” Cruz told reporters at an event on Saturday in Tyler. “I can tell you the people of Texas don’t support it.”

Members of Congress are negotiating an immigration bill with President Donald Trump that could include both building a wall along the Mexican border and allowing undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children a path to legal citizenship, according to the Associated Press.

“I think the legislative proposals being floated in Washington are deeply troubling,” Cruz said. “Those here illegally, we should not be granting a path to citizenship. That is wrong and it’s inconsistent with the promises that we made to the men and women of this country.”

Cruz said the Republicans who are advocating for citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came here as children are more liberal than former president Barack Obama.

Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program allowed about 800,000 immigrants who arrived as children to stay in the country, according to Cruz, while the deal under consideration could benefit closer to 2 million.

“Yet you’ve got Republicans falling all over themselves to grant amnesty and a path to citizenship to millions of people who are here illegally,” he said. “That is a mistake. It’s wrong. And we shouldn’t be doing it.”

Cruz also linked immigrants who came here as children to gangs and drug cartels that are trafficking unaccompanied minors across the border

“People trafficking in unaccompanied minors, they’re not goodhearted social workers with beards and Birkenstocks trying to help the kids,” Cruz said. “These are vicious, transnational drug cartels, and these children are subject to sexual abuse, to physical abuse.”

“When you ask these unaccompanied minors why they are coming, the answer they would give over and over and over again is that they had been told they would get a ‘permiso’ (Spanish word for permission) if they just got here and could stay and become an American citizen,” Cruz said.

“It has ended up subjecting more children to physical abuse at the hands of corrupt and brutal drug cartels,” he said.

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