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Sixteen months after losing the White House and realizing that it must reach out to Latinos, the Republican Party is spending $10million to ramp up Hispanic field operations in key states and flood Spanish-language news media with advertisements opposing the nations health-care law.

In Washington, however, the partys bid to improve its standing among the nations fastest-growing voting bloc continues to be overshadowed by strenuous opposition some say hostility to immigration reform.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee voted to eliminate the public advocate for immigrants who face hearings at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And this week, House Republicans overwhelmingly supported a bill called the Enforce Act, which would limit President Obamas use of prosecutorial discretion the legal rationale used to stop deportations of hundreds of thousands of young immigrants.

GOP aides said the bills were not intended as anti-immigration measures but rather to rein in executive overreach by Obama in a broad array of areas, and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) says that immigration reform is simply on hold. But Democrats pounced on the measures, and immigrant advocates quickly denounced the Republican votes.

The latest machinations within the GOP come at a time of mounting dissatisfaction from Latino groups toward Obama on the issue of deportation. In a meeting Thursday, Obama told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to find ways to conduct deportation policies more humanely, the White House said.

Given Obamas troubles, some Republicans say the party is missing a chance to make inroads with the Hispanic community, which will be critical in 2016.

Weve gone from having a strategy of, Were going to do this, and this is how its going to happen, to now simply saying, Well, perhaps we have a chance to do something, Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said of immigration legislation. And it sounds like, We have no idea, no control, lets just see what happens.

The risks of the current GOP approach were apparent Thursday morning, when Boehner was ambushed by immigration activists while eating breakfast at a Capitol Hill diner. The activists were angered by the Houses embrace of the Enforce Act, , which would potentially limit Obamas ability to stem deportations as he did in 2012 for a group of young immigrants who have come to be known as Dreamers in connection with a different measure.

Speaker Boehner, I just want to ask you why you want to break the dream of the Dreamers, of the students? one woman said.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, that is not very nice, he replied during the exchange, which was caught on video by activists from the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM). Boehner then got up and left. It was the second time in five months that immigration activists had confronted him at the same restaurant. A spokesman for Boehner declined to comment.

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GOP outreach to Latinos overshadowed by conservative opposition to immigration reform