Florida

This time Mitt Romney is misrepresenting Jeb Bush’s record, and his own, as he continues to struggle both the substance and appearance of his pandering flip-flop on immigration.

So these days, Mitt Romney is claiming that he has a strong record because he cut a deal but never implemented an agreement to allow state police to enforce federal immigration laws. He is making completely incorrect comparisons to efforts done by the (re-elected and popular) Jeb Bush in Florida:

“I deputized, as did Governor Bush here, my state police to be able to enforce immigration laws.

Except that that’s not really what Bush did. From a June 2002 AP article which is quoted in full after the jump, what Bush did was train counter-terrorism officers on federal immigration law and allow them to enforce that law as part of counter-terrorism:

"It’s targeted only to terrorist investigations — not checking green cards and work camps," FDLE Commissioner Tim Moore said Thursday.

In fact, Bush explicitly didn’t want the Florida police to do more general immigration checking:

"I would have a lot of trepidation if … every police officer was going to be a sworn INS officer and our duties end up with local law enforcement becoming the immigration cops of the country," Bush said.

So Romney seems to be confusing Jeb Bush’s actual attempts to use immigration laws to protect us against terrorists with Romney’s media preening about illegals.

Romney’s claim about "deputizing … state police" is, strictly speaking, also false. The agreement that Romney had with the feds required 4.5 weeks of training. When Romney announced it in December, Deval Patrick had already said he would end the program.  Indeed, Patrick did end the program, about 4.5 weeks later. In other words, not a single state police official was ever authorized to carry out the arrest of illegals on federal immigration violations. The state police never could have caught those illegal Guatemalans on his lawn. Here’s what actually happened:

Then Governor Mitt Romney signed the 15-page agreement with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Dec. 13 that would have allowed specially deputized state troopers to arrest suspected illegal immigrants and charge them with violating US immigration laws.

During his campaign, Patrick called the plan a ?gimmick? and told reporters on Dec. 21 that he would quash the agreement shortly after taking office. About 30 troopers had been scheduled to take a five-week training course early next year.

So Romney’s great immigration accomplishment is that he signed an agreement to allow a training class that never happened.

Full article after the jump
(more…)

Yesteday, I wrote about the possibility of Mitt Romney facing political problems in Florida because of his pandering flip-flop on immigration. ABC picked up on the issue, and pointed out that Jeb Bush was "disappointed." Turns out that the Miami Herald picked up the story too: But his immigration stance Read more…

There has been speculation that Rudy Giuliani is playing very carefully on the immigration issue because he wants Schwarzenegger’s endorsement. I have a related theory. Is Mitt Romney hurting himself with Jeb Bush because of his flip-flopping pander on immigration? Several points as you think about this. First Jeb Bush Read more…