Of all the GOP candidates, Mitt Romney staked out the most extreme immigration positions during the Republican primary. He said his immigration plan would be to make undocumented immigrants “self-deport,” and he vowed to veto the DREAM Act. Since he effectively locked up the nomination, however, Romney tried to distance himself from his earlier hardline stances, and a Republican Party official even tried to claim that Romney is “still deciding what his position on immigration is.”

But Romney is still losing among Latino voters by an enormous (and widening) margin. While Romney has tried to moderate his immigration views from the primary to the general election, his immigration advisers and supporters still include extremely anti-immigrant officials.

KRIS KOBACH

Currently serving as Kansas’ secretary of state, Kobach is the author of harmful state and local anti-immigrant ordinances like those in Arizona, Alabama, and South Carolina. He wrote the vast majority of them as senior counselor to the restrictionist Immigration Reform Law Institute and as a private consultant. He has insisted that Romney wants SB 1070 as a national model, and he doesn’t expect Romney to soften the extreme immigration positions he took during the GOP primary. And following President Obama’s directive to halt deportations for up to 1.4 million young undocumented immigrants, Kobach called the policy “illegal.” Kobach advised Romney’s 2008 campaign on immigration and homeland security, and he returned to that role for the 2012 election after he endorsed the GOP presidential candidate in January. In April, Romney tried to distance himself from Kobach while softening his immigration positions, saying he was a “supporter,” not an “adviser” before conceding that Kobach was still an “informal adviser.”

PETE WILSON

After the former Republican California governor endorsed Romney, the presidential candidate named Wilson honorary California chair of his campaign. In a statement touting the endorsement, Romney said, “I’m honored to have Governor Pete Wilson’s support, because he’s one of California’s most accomplished leaders.” As governor of California, Wilson prominently supported Proposition 187, an anti-immigrant ballot initiative that made unauthorized immigrants ineligible for public services such as health care or public education. California voters approved the measure in 1994, a precursor to Arizona’s SB 1070, before courts declared it unconstitutional in 1997.

RUSSELL PEARCE

The former Arizona Senate president, who was ousted in a recall election, was the architect of Arizona’s infamous SB 1070. He threw his support behind Romney and said that the GOP presidential candidate’s “immigration policy is identical to mine.” And Pearce said Romney “absolutely” called for Arizona’s law to be used as a national “model” because Romney has advocated for self-deportation. “[Self-deportation] is in SB 1070,” Pearce said in April.

JAN BREWER

Citing only Romney’s “pro-business background” and his “political history,” Arizona’s nativist Republican governor endorsed Romney ahead of her state’s primary in February. Brewer is one of the nation’s most anti-immigrant governors, and she signed SB 1070, the first of a wave of anti-immigrant bills authored by Kobach.

RAY WALSER

After President Obama announced the directive to halt deportations for DREAM Act-eligible young adults, Romney refused to say whether or not he would undo the policy. But Walser, a co-chair of Romney’s campaign for issues pertaining to Latin America, said he thought Romney would get rid of it. “My anticipation is that he would probably rescind this directive were he to be elected in November,” he told The Daily Telegraph. He added that the decision would match up with the “very tough” positions Romney had taken on immigration. Walser is a senior policy adviser at the Heritage Foundation who spent 27 years working for the U.S. State Department.

LAMAR SMITH

The Texas Republican, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, became one of Romney’s earliest congressional endorsers in October 2011, choosing to back the former Massachusetts governor over Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Smith has pledged to not hold a hearing on the DREAM Act in his hearing, which Romney vowed to veto.

Though the alleged gunman at the theater shooting last Friday was armed to the teeth, able to fire off 60 rounds in a minute, and dressed fully in bulletproof gear, former Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce thinks one of the people in the theater should have been able to take him down.

In a Facebook post that has since been deleted, Pearce criticized the people in the theater for a lack of courage and for not being armed, saying that if they had been, they could have saved lives. “All that was needed is one Courages/Brave [sic] man prepared mentally or otherwise to stop this it could have been done,” he posted:

Pearce is best known for having authored Arizona’s anti-immigrant SB1070. He was exposed just last week for writing hateful, racist emails about Latinos in his state.

When Pearce was inevitably called out by local media for his insensitivity, he walked back his earlier statements, saying that he meant that gun control laws were entirely to blame, and not the victims themselves:

While Cinemark does have a no firearms policy, it is highly unlikely that someone would have been able to take down the alleged gunman. He was heavily armed, in full protective gear, threw tear gas before he opened fire, and was in a dark, crowded theater. Armed law enforcement officers responded within 90 seconds, and in that time he injured or killed 70 people.

The ACLU of Arizona has released thousands of emails it says prove that SB 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law, was racially motivated. According to a report by the Arizona Republic, the emails, acquired through a public records request, are to and from the author of SB 1070, recalled Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce (R). The documents may help the ACLU to convince a federal judge to prevent the “show me your papers” section of SB 1070 from going into effect.

Key excerpts from the over 10,000 pages of emails include:

• “Last week, Denver’s illegal aliens sang our national anthem in Spanish and bastardized the words of OUR country’s most sacred song.”
• “Battles commence as Mexican nationalists struggle to infuse their men into American government and strengthen control over their strongholds. One look at Los Angeles with its Mexican-American mayor shows you Vincente Fox’s general Varigossa commanding an American city.”
• “They create enclaves of separate groups that shall balkanize our nation into fractured nightmares of social unrest and poverty.”
• “Corruption is the mechanism by which Mexico operates. Its people spawn more corruption wherever they go because it is their only known way of life.”
• “Tough, nasty illegals and their advocates grow in such numbers that law and order will not subdue them. They run us out of our cities and states. They conquer our language and our schools. They render havoc and chaos in our schools.”
• “We are much like the Titanic as we inbreed millions of Mexico’s poor, the world’s poor and we watch our country sink.”

One email, with a the subject line “What’s a racist?” included the following:

• “I’m racist because I don’t want to be taxed to pay for a prison population comprised of mainly Hispanics, Latinos, Mexicans or whatever else you wish to call them.”
• “I’m a racist because I believe the News Media has a duty to tell us the names and race of criminals.”
• “I’m a racist because I object to having to pay higher sales tax and property tax to build more schools for the illegitimate children of illegal aliens.”
• “I’m a racist because I dislike having to push one for English and/or listening to a message in Spanish.”
• “Factual is not racial. Realism is not racism. The new definition of racist is anyone winning an argument with a liberal, minority, pacifist, bible banger, or moron.”

The part of SB 1070 that is currently being challenged by the ACLU is section 2(B), the “show me your papers” provision. The Supreme Court struck down three other provisions of the law earlier this summer, but left 2(B) intact, noting that there are potential constitutional problems with the section. The ACLU filed suit in federal court earlier this week contending that 2(B) unlawfully discriminates against Latinos and individuals of Mexican origin.

A recent poll of registered Latino voters found that 66 percent of those polled oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to leave “show me your papers” intact, while only 29 percent approve. Seventy-nine percent of Latino voters are concerned about racial profiling, responding likely to the question “how likely is it that Latinos who are legal immigrants or U.S. citizens will get stopped or questioned by police?” And 70 percent believe that allowing police to check immigration status will not increase public safety.

–Alex Brown

Former Arizona state Senate President Russell Pearce, the sponsor of Arizona’s harsh immigration law SB 1070, was barred last week from hosting fundraising events in two Mexican restaurants. Pearce was recalled from office last November and the fundraising events were a part of his new bid for Senate.

The fundraising event was originally supposed to be held at Macayo’s Restaurant. But DeeDee Garcia Blase, a co-founder of a Latino organization called the Tequila Party, called Macayo’s and organized a protest of the event, convincing the restaurant to bar Pearce from using the space. Pearce then tried to moved his party to Oaxa Restuarante y Cantina, but was met with similar news:

Within hours, Oaxaca also cancelled Pearce’s event. Joseph Aguayo, the restaurant’s manager, told Arizona Capitol Times he did so after Garcia Blase contacted him and told him the event, which she said was registered under a different name, was actually to help Pearce raise money in his bid to return to the Senate after being recalled last year.

“We don’t need that,” Aguayo said. “We want to keep the support of our Latino community.”

Garcia Blase said that Pearce is trying to hold his fundraiser at Mexican restaurants for purely political reasons.

“They’re doing it to make a mockery of Latinos. It’s to make them appear Latino-friendly,” she said.

Finally, Pearce turned to a local high school but was refused access because he had asked “too late in the day.”

SB 1070, which is currently pending before the Supreme Court, requires that police officers with “reasonable suspicion” check the immigration status of an individual during traffic stops, empowers police to arrest individuals they believe are likely to be deportable, and makes “it a state crime to violate federal immigration registration and employment requirements.” Pearce’s recall, which made him the first legislative presiding officer to be recalled from office in American history, “centered on his authorship of the immigration law.”

Briana Rodriquez, a manager of Oaxaca Restaurante, explained the restaurant’s decision to bar Pearce, saying, “I don’t know why they’re trying to have it at a Mexican restaurant…But we serve the Latino community. Most of our staff is Latino. And we do not support SB 1070. It would be an insult to our ancestors to allow them to come here.”

-Nina Liss-Schultz

Yesterday, J.T. Ready, a neo-Nazi and member of the anti-immigrant Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, reportedly strapped on body armor, grabbed several firearms, and then killed four people in Gilbert, Arizona. One of the dead is a toddler. Ready also was killed in this incident, although reports vary on whether he took his own life. At the time of his death, Ready was running for Pinal County sheriff.

Ready’s beliefs were extreme even among extremists. In 2007, for example, he wrote that illegal immigration occurs because “negroids screw monkeys and rape babies in afreaka [sic]. Then stupid white man who licks kosher jew rear lets negroids in.” Yet Ready traveled surprisingly close to the center of power in his state. Ready claims he was a protégé to former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), the author of Arizona’s harsh immigration law who was recently removed from office in a recall election, and there is ample documentation that the two men knew each other and that Pearce once supported Ready politically.

Pearce and Ready’s relationship stretches back at least to 2004, when Pearce ordained Ready as an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. By 2006, when Ready ran for Mesa City Council — a campaign that sputtered after the public learned that Ready was once court-martialed and kicked out of the Marine Corps — he received Pearce’s endorsement. Ready also claims that he was with Pearce’s son Josh when Josh Pearce got a tattoo of an iron eagle with a swastika on his neck and chest, but that he also talked Josh out of joining a skinhead group.

Pearce later tried to distance himself from Ready, but Ready insisted as recently as last year that Pearce was a seminal figure in his life. In an interview with a local Fox station, Ready called Pearce “a surrogate father” who “enlightened him,” that they spent time together at Pearce’s cabin, and that they were “around each other quite a bit.” In the same local news segment, Pearce admits that he had an association with Ready, but denies that it was as close as Ready suggests. Watch it:

Russell Pearce: Pioneer Against Illegal Immigration or Racist?: MyFoxPHOENIX.com

Ready is dead, and Pearce obviously has an interest in downplaying his relationship with Ready if a deep bond did once exist between the men. So it may never be known with certainty whether Pearce was the father figure Ready claims he was. Ready, however, does admit to one divide between him and the former Arizona senator. He claims that Pearce taught him to stay “more covert” for “long term strategy aims,” but Ready ultimately chose to ignore this advice.

Mitt Romney had the most conservative immigration policy of any Republican presidential candidate during most of the primary, but now that’s he trying to appeal to Hispanic voters as he pivots to general election, the presumed GOP nominee has been shifting back towards the center. Yesterday, he opened to door to a Republican alternative to the DREAM Act — a law he vowed to veto during the primary — and earlier, he said that he never called for making Arizona’s harsh immigration law a “model” for the nation.

But that’s not how one of the key people behind that law, former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, sees it. The former Republican lawmaker, who was ousted in a recall election, was the key force behind turning SB-1070, authored by Romney adviser Kris Kobach, into law.

He told reporters today that he “absolutely” believed Mitt Romney had endorsed the law as a model for the country. The Huffington Post’s Elise Foley reports:

“The folks that he’s said [are] his advisers on this, I have worked with for years and have great confidence and trust in them,” Pearce told reporters after a Senate subcommittee hearing on the immigration law. “I know Romney is a compassionate man, most of us, I’d like to think, are. But I think he also understands the crisis and the damage to this republic and the need to enforce our law.” [...]

Romney also has advocated for what he called “self-deportation,” or making things difficult for undocumented immigrants until they decide to leave, one of the central tenets of the Arizona law. [...] “[Self-deportation] is in SB 1070,” Pearce said.

Previously, Pearce has said that Romney’s “immigration policy is identical to mine.”

Romney has tried to distance himself from Kobach, who also helped author the controversial immigration crackdowns in Alabama, South Carolina, and other states. But Kobach quickly contradicted him, saying he regularly advises senior members of Romney’s staff.