Lost amid the congressional shouting over immigration reform is a Washington rarity: A freshman Republican with Tea Party roots and scant experience in the national political arena is poised to engineer a legislative feat that eluded more senior lawmakers of both parties for years.

Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, sat down with The Washington Examiner to discuss the prospects for an unlikely bipartisan compromise on immigration reform that he helped craft as a member of the Senate’s Gang of Eight and which he is now trying to sell to fellow conservatives, the package’s most vocal critics.