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Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) backed down from a previous promise his spokeswoman made to Breitbart News that he would consider voting in favor of amendments to the Senate's immigration bill that would close a loophole allowing illegal immigrants immediate access to state and local welfare.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) aims to block any illegal immigrant from ever receiving any state, local, or federal welfare or public benefits with a series of amendments to the immigration reform bill currently under review in the U.S. Senate. Cruz has filed five amendments to the bill. The one currently marked “Cruz 2” on the Senate Judiciary Committee website (the amendments have not yet received official numbers) has a stated purpose to “provide that aliens who have entered or remained present in the United States while not in lawful status shall not be eligible for means-tested benefits.” The amendment would...

Arrests of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States have nearly tripled in recent months — in anticipation of Congressional efforts to enact comprehensive immigration legislation, border patrol agents told CBS News Wednesday. “Once the first group gets across, they call their family, they call their friends and let them know, ‘Hey the time is right, come on over,’” Border Patrol agent and union representative Chris Cabrera told CBS News. In March, 7,500 illegals were arrested in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas — which includes McAllen — Cabrera told CBS News. That’s up from 2,800 in January.

The Gang of Eight’s immigration bill could make illegal immigrants eligible for state and local welfare benefits almost immediately after it is passed, according to Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), one of the proposal’s leading critics. Further, he contends, some particular categories of amnestied immigrants and their relatives would be eligible for federal benefits long before the 13-year waiting period usually cited by the bill’s advocates, such as Senator Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), who challenged Sessions’s argument in a press release on Tuesday. These are just a couple of reasons why Sessions and others are calling on the Gang of...

Welfare: Not content with having more Americans on food stamps than people in Spain, the Obama administration is ringing the dinner bell for illegal aliens. We'll feed you and not check your status. As we wrote last July, just as food stamp use has skyrocketed here under President Obama, so have marketing efforts to Hispanics under a partnership with Mexico. We dubbed the program "Fat and Furious" after the administration's gun-running program that also seemingly had worthy goals but had unclear motives and pernicious effects. "USDA and the government of Mexico have entered into a partnership to help educate eligible...

The immigration bill introduced to the Senate a week and a half ago would, if passed, allow illegal immigrants to access state and local welfare benefits immediately, Breitbart News has learned. The financial impact of allowing potentially millions of immigrants onto state and local public assistance could overwhelm these programs' budgets. “The Gang of Eight made a promise that illegal immigrants will not be able to access public benefits,” Sessions said in a statement to Breitbart News. “We already know that, once granted green cards and ultimately citizenship, illegal immigrants will be able to access all public benefit programs at...