A Potential Obama Ally Becomes an Outspoken Foe on Immigration

(From the nytimes.com) Representative Luis V. Gutierrez was all set to be a friend of the Obama administration, a point man for the White House among Latinos. A nine-term Democrat, he had cut his political teeth in the wards of Chicago, just as Barack Obama did, and the two knew each other from their parallel early careers in Illinois.

But instead of a favorite ally, Mr. Gutierrez has become a noisy, needling outsider — and not just in the halls of Congress. Saying he was fed up with the president not leading an overhaul of immigration laws, Mr. Gutierrez was arrested along with more than 30 other protesters on May 1 after a sit-in in front of the White House.

Mr. Gutierrez’s frustration was only deepened by the president’s announcement this week that he would send up to 1,200 more National Guard troops to the border with Mexico, a move Mr. Gutierrez called “sound-bite driven politics.”

“There is 25 years of hard evidence that the president is wrong,” said Mr. Gutierrez, who is chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s immigration task force. “Border security and immigration are not one-dimensional problems that can be solved by more boots on the border.”

Read more here: A Potential Obama Ally Becomes an Outspoken Foe on Immigration