Immigration record

Cruz can't escape questions about his immigration record

By ELIZA COLLINS

Ted Cruz just can’t escape the immigration question. On Friday conservative radio host Laura Ingraham joined the chorus of people pressing the Texas senator on his immigration record after rival Marco Rubio attacked him during Tuesday's GOP debate.

“The Washington establishment is panicking right now, and they’re panicking because conservatives are uniting behind my campaign,” Cruz said, in trying to explain the onslaught of opposition research and comments released from the Rubio campaign.

Cruz has been forced on his back foot after Rubio turned his own vulnerability on immigration into an attack on Cruz. Rubio was part of the 2013 Gang of Eight effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform that included a 13-year pathway to citizenship for millions here illegally. Cruz in 2013 pushed an amendment to the bill that would have stripped the pathway to citizenship but would not have touched a pathway to legalization.

Rubio has taken Cruz to task for that amendment, saying it shows that Cruz's views on immigration are closer to his own.

“It’s the most idiotic proposition. Their entire baloney theory is based on an amendment I introduced,” Cruz told Ingraham Friday. Adding, “of course I am” glad the bill didn’t pass.

Despite his emphatic denials that he is against legalization for undocumented immigrants, Cruz has had to answer repeatedly in interviews and out on the campaign trail this week about what his views really are. He's tried to explain that he introduced the amendment as a "poison pill" — which many of his colleagues agree with — but it's still hard to square his past comments encouraging the reform package with his current words against it.

Cruz told Ingraham on Friday that is views are “abundantly clear.”