Inside the White House, the president’s chief of staff, Leon Panetta, had previously served as a congressman from the San Joaquin Valley, in Central California. There were some lines he wasn’t comfortable crossing. “We all understand the problem of illegal immigrants,” he said at the time. “We’re all trying to ensure that we have additional enforcement to protect against illegal immigrants. But I, for the life of me, do not understand why we need to penalize legal immigrants in that process.”
