AC

Marco Rubio on Thursday defended comments Mitt Romney made earlier this year about the likelihood that undocumented immigrants would self-deport if the federal government cracked down on illegal immigration. "I've never understood self-deportation, in what the governor has presented, as a policy. It's not a policy," Rubio told reporters during a breakfast meeting in Washington, D.C. "I think it's an observation of what people will do in a country that's enforcing its immigration laws." The Florida senator, who has spend part of his short career in Washington crafting legislation that would allow the children of illegal immigrants to stay in the United States, was referring to remarks Romney made in January during a GOP primary debate in Tampa, Florida. At the time, Romney predicted that illegal immigrants would voluntarily leave the U.S. if the federal government put more resources into enforcing existing laws and removed what he called "magnets," -- that is, government benefits...