Did Immigration Chair Rat Out Obama?: Says Prez Secretly Agreed 'To Do Something From An Executive Level' in 2010

President Obama has made rather conflicting statements on immigration over the first few years of his administration.  As the Blaze has formerly reported, the President stated clearly in 2011:

"There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President."

 ~Univison, March 2011

 

“As I mentioned when I was at La Raza a few weeks back, I wish I had a magic wand and could make this all happen on my own.”

~Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Sep. 15, 2011

 

"The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions. That's not how our Constitution is written."

~National Council of La Raza, July 25, 2011

However, in an interview with the program"Democracy Now," Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) leaked that Obama's decision to "do something from an executive level" came well before he made these apologetic statements.  Gutierrez is the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s Immigration Task Force and was privy to many private meetings with Obama on the matter of suspending immigration law. He said of his meetings with the President:

"When we couldn’t pass the DREAM Act, because there were five senators who wouldn’t vote for closure back in December of 2010, we went to see the president a couple of days before Christmas in 2010, and we said, ‘We need to do something from an executive level. The president agreed to do that.'"

If Mr. Gutierrez's account is correct, an executive order on illegal immigration was the president's intention since late 2010. Rep. Gutierrez went on to describe the closed-door decision process:

“And so, I’m really, really delighted, because each and every time we kept going back, and we did it quietly, but we did it in a meaningful, consecutive manner. This is the Barack Obama we voted for. We’re happy that he is our leader and our champion. We want to continue to work with him and redouble our efforts so that we can expand relief and we can expand justice.”

Watch the Congressman's Illuminating comments from our video earlier this week: