The Rule of Law is lost when an amnesty is given to illegal aliens, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said during a high-profile congressional hearing.

During a hearing on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee, Sessions — a longtime advocate for ending illegal immigration and reducing legal immigration — spoke briefly about his feelings regarding an amnesty for illegal aliens.

“Mr. King, I would just say, it is correct in my view and I think you probably share it, that something is lost whenever you provide an amnesty,” Sessions said in response to a question from Rep. Steve King (R-IA) about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

In September, Sessions announced that President Trump’s administration would halt all DACA enrollment on October 5 and officially end the program on March 5, 2018. DACA was created by former President Obama, giving nearly 800,000 illegal aliens work permits, access to Social Security and temporary amnesty to remain in the U.S.

Since Sessions announced DACA’s end, the Republican establishment, Democrats, the big business lobby and the open borders lobby have been scrambling to pass an amnesty for the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens on the program’s rolls.

King asked Sessions what his views would be if Trump extended the DACA end date past March 2018 because Congress failed in passing another amnesty.

The exchange went as follows:

KING: And there’s a lot of public dialogue about what kind of legislation might we pass in conjunction with a DACA policy and that’s up in the air right now. I’m noticing the Democrats are saying we’re going to have everything we want on DACA or we’ll shut the government down. So it causes me to think about what should happen if Congress reaches an impasse and there is no passage of any legislation to extend the DACA policy. If the President should decide on or before that March 5 date or around that time that he wants to extend the DACA policy, what would your position be at that time?

SESSIONS: Well, that’s hypothetical Senator King. I don’t think I should speculate on that. But I do think Congress will have to give it thought. We have a law now, it’s in place as Congress passed and Congress would have to change it.

Watch the exchange here:

A recent poll, Breitbart News reported, shows that less than 30 percent of Americans, fewer than half of Democrats, less than 20 percent of Republicans and fewer than 25 percent of Independents say a DACA amnesty should be a priority for the GOP-led Congress.

Since DACA’s inception, more than 2,100 DACA recipients saw their protected status revoked for being involved in gang activity or suspected/convicted of a felony. Due to a loophole in the DACA program, more than 39,000 illegal aliens have been able to obtain Green Cards and more than 1,000 naturalized.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.