On Friday, Breitbart posted an interview with Chris Crane, the honest pro-sovereignty President of the National ICE Council who has testified before Congress about the government’s purposeful immigration anarchy. Breitbart’s subject was a 2013 Gang of Eight press conference in which Crane was ejected for trying to ask a question and was nearly arrested for daring to commit free speech about immigration. I reported about an answering presser organized by America’s Senator, Jeff Sessions, where Crane explained how he had been jacked around by Senator Marco Rubio in a last-minute meeting (Concerned Law Enforcement Officers Speak against Gang of Eight Amnesty).

The Feb. 19 Breitbart interview with Chris Crane expands on the details of that interaction and how poorly he was treated by amnesty peddler Rubio: Exclusive: On Eve of South Carolina Vote, Nation’s ICE Officers Detail How Marco Rubio Betrayed Them. Here’s a taste:

BNN: Sen. Rubio pledged his bill would provide enforcement first, do you believe this was an honest representation the bill? CRANE: No, I don’t believe it was an honest representation. Protection from deportation, a type of de facto amnesty, came almost immediately as the first step in a much broader amnesty like process provided in the bill. There was no real promise of border security in the bill, and the bill provided nothing for interior enforcement, but instead made legalization of criminal aliens and gang members a priority. People need to understand that this bill was written by pro-amnesty and open borders groups that have no concern for America’s borders or the safety of its communities. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the bill was such a lopsided mess.

BNN: Sen. Rubio’s bill legalized sex offenders, drunk drivers, and others with criminal records. From an ICE officer’s perspective, how do you feel about his decision to legalize illegal immigrants with criminal convictions?

CRANE: Under the Obama Administration, ICE released estimates stating that approximately 2 million criminal aliens resided in the U.S. That’s 10 times the size the U.S. Marine Corps, at least when I was in. And I think ICE’s estimates are low.

People need to wake up. We can’t continue to keep taking millions of the world’s criminals without expecting serious repercussions to public safety and expense and burden to our legal system. Local and state jurisdictions are already overwhelmed by the criminal alien problem in our country.

On to Saturday morning: Fox News’ Neil Cavuto brought up the Crane remarks to Rubio, who went into denial mode, including a lot of niggling details that seemed designed to distract from the important points:

CAVUTO: Former ICE officials now who are saying that your push for enforcement on the border as an inconsistent when you were part of the Gang of Eight, that you were not making it a priority. When they questioned this Chris Crane, who ran this council group of officers, said that “Not one of the changes we suggested was made to the bill before Senator Rubio introduced it.” That he tried and failed with you repeatedly, that your heart wasn’t in it.

RUBIO: Yeah, number one, that’s not true and he’s not an ICE official, he’s the head of a union, and it’s being reported on a website that’s not a credible source [Ed: Breitbart.com where Rubio published an op-ed on Feb. 17!]. It’s the same website that said, Neil, that you guys gave me the questions to the debate because one of the members of my staff is a family member. . .

Let’s go back to 2013. Harry Reid was in charge of the Senate, Democrats control the Senate and they were going to move forward on some sort of immigration reform, so what I wanted to do was make whatever came out of the Senate as conservative as possible. It’s still didn’t go straight to the President. Whatever came out of the Senate had to go to the House. The House was controlled by conservative Republicans, so my goal was to produce the most conservative thing possible out of the Senate, have the House take that up and make it even better and then to come together as Republicans and say to the president: this is what we’re willing to do; take it or leave it on the issue of immigration.

Breitbart answered the various accusations flung at it, counting “at least five demonstrably false statements in under two minutes” (Full Panic Mode: Rubio Caught Lying About ICE Agent, Breitbart News on Fox).

Arguably, the most important lie was Rubio’s dissembling that he kicked a bad bill over to the House to have them fix it. But it was the Raza/donors’ dream bill, cooked up behind closed doors to give the whole leftist panoply their ideal legislation, serving up cheap labor and gang crime forgiveness all in one horrific package.  Rubio’s big-money donors wanted minimal adjustments to their bill when it went to the House.  Jeff Sessions reminded radio listeners the other day of the billion-dollar campaign mounted by powerful open borders enthusiasts to pass the Schumer-Rubio bill. The amnesty establishment was all in for the Gang of Eight, particularly because its spokesman was a Cuban Republican with a winning smile.

A few hours after the Rubio appearance with Cavuto on Saturday, Senator Sessions posted a press release expressing his support for Chris Crane. Hopefully more will be done in the near future to refute Rubio’s self-aggrandizing rewrite of Gang of Eight history. He cannot be allowed to be the GOP candidate.

Sessions Issues Statement in Support of ICE Officer and Council President Chris Crane, Feb 20 2016

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) released a statement today highlighting the important role ICE Council President Crane played in defeating the 2013 ‘Gang of Eight’ immigration bill: 

“Chris Crane is an honest man of integrity who has served his country for many years as a United States Marine and as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. He is an American hero who was chosen by nearly 6,000 ICE officers, agents and employees to head their union and speak to the nation on their behalf. He courageously spoke up to expose the administration’s political manipulation of ICE officers, providing all of us an early warning of the administration’s near total non-enforcement of immigration laws, years before it was widely known.  When the Gang of eight and President Obama were drafting their immigration bill, he asked to be allowed to participate and provide input. In fact, House Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte and I personally requested that President Obama meet with the ICE union, but he never did.  The White House and the Gang of Eight refused to listen to Chris and his officers because the truth is they never wanted their professional advice. The bill was designed to benefit the powerful special interests who guided its creation from the beginning — it was not designed to benefit the national interest, nor the interests of our nation’s law enforcement officers. Chris Crane exposed the fatal weaknesses of that bill and played a major role in stopping what would have been a disaster for the country.”