Joe Arpaio, the controversial Arizona Sheriff from Maricopa County, arrested a 6-year-old undocumented immigrant on Friday. The move came the same day President Obama announced a new policy halting deportations for young undocumented immigrants.

The Arizona Republic has the story:

The girl was with 15 other people believed to be in the country illegally who were traveling to the Midwest and northeast United States, said Chris Hegstrom, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office.

“She’s been turned over to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to try to determine where she’s from. She told us she’s from El Salvador. That’s what she told us,” he said.

The arrest took place Friday night at an undisclosed location in northern Maricopa County…

The sheriff said his deputies arresting child suspected of being an illegal immigrant the same day Obama implemented the policy is a coincidence. But if more illegal children enter the country after hearing about the new policy, Arpaio said it may not be by happenstance.

“Are we going to get more of these situations where illegals feel like now they’re going to be safe? I don’t know,” he said.

Immediately following the President’s announcement Arpaio told a local ABC affiliate that it would not impact his approach toward young undocumented immigrants. “They will still be arrested,” he said.

Arpaio is currently being sued by the Department of Justice for multiple civil rights violations. He also admitted to using taxpayer resources to pursue an investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate, a widely debunked conspiracy theory.

On Fox News Sunday this morning, host Chris Wallace asked Bill Kristol, a leading GOP pundit and apologist for the Iraq War, how he felt about President Obama’s recent announcement that the Department of Homeland Security would halt deportations of many undocumented students. Wallace probably did not expect the answer that he got:

KRISTOL: I think its a sensible policy. I think it would be much better if that were the law of the land, and I think the president’s pushing the edges of prosecutorial discretion in saying we’re not going to enforce a law in order to leave these people in the country. But I think it’s the right thing to do, actually.

Watch it:

Notably, this is a significant shift from Kristol’s previous attitudes about President Obama’s immigration policies. Two years ago, Kristol falsely accused the Obama Administration of being “reluctant” to enforce immigration laws, when in fact deportations are at record highs under President Obama.

Kristol’s transformation, however, closely maps the GOP’s efforts to paper over their recent anti-immigrant positions as the November election draws nigh. During the primary, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney campaigned with the former hate group attorney that wrote Arizona and Alabama’s harsh immigration laws — on Martin Luther King Day. This morning, however, Romney twice refused to say whether he would reverse Obama’s recently announced pro-immigrant policy. As Kristol put it this morning on Fox, the Republican standard bearer’s hardline past on immigration is a “big problem for Romney.”

This morning on CBS, Mitt Romney was asked five times whether he would continue Obama’s new policy on immigration, ending deportations for DREAM-eligible youth. Romney flatly refused to take a position. The transcript, via Politico:

SCHIEFFER: “[W]ould you repeal [Obama's immigration] order if you became president?” …

ROMNEY: “This is something Congress has been working on, and I thought we were about to see some proposals brought forward by Senator Marco Rubio and by Democrat senators, but the President jumped in and said I’m going to take this action … [H]e was president for the last three and a half years and did nothing on immigration. Two years he had a Democrat House and Senate, did nothing of a permanent or long-term basis. What I would do, is I’d make sure that by coming into office, I would work with Congress to put in place a long-term solution for the children of those that have come here illegally.” …

SCHIEFFER: “But would you repeal this?” …

ROMNEY: “[M]y anticipation is I’d come into office and say we need to get this done, on a long-term basis, not this kind of stop-gap measure. What the president did, he should have worked on this years ago, if he felt seriously about this he should have taken action when he had a Democrat House and Senate, but he didn’t. He saves these sort of things until four and a half months before the general election.” …

Watch it:

In the Republican primaries, Romney’s position on immigration — and particuarly DREAM-eligible youth — was much clearer. He relentlessly attacked Gov. Rick Perry for passing a version of the DREAM Act in Texas. Romney also promised to veto the DREAM Act. His preferred solution for undocumented immigrants was to make their lives so miserable they would “self-deport.”

In an interview on Friday, Kris Kobach, an immigration advisor to the Romney campaign, told ThinkProgress that the new Obama policy was “illegal.” Another Romney advisor told CNN that Romney’s position was “the same” as President Obama.