Leaders of groups that back immigration restrictions lauded President-elect Trump on Friday for selecting Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as his attorney general, recalling that he was “instrumental” in blocking the 2013 Senate bill which sought to link border security to a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

“Sen. Sessions will bring to the Department of Justice a fierce independence from privileged special interests, as revealed in his nearly two decades of leadership on immigration policy,” Roy Beck, executive director of the anti-amnesty group NumbersUSA, said in a statement.