As governor, Haley took on Obama on immigration. Now she’s fighting Trump

A few months into her first term as governor, Nikki Haley signed one of the strictest immigration bills in the country.

Like Arizona’s infamous “show me your papers” law, the most controversial part of South Carolina’s legislation required law enforcement to check people’s legal status during stops if they suspected they were in the country illegally. Critics said it would lead to racial profiling.

Haley drew on her own background as the daughter of immigrants who came to the country legally to stress that the bill wasn’t about intolerance, but upholding the law.

“This enforces the fact that illegal immigration is not welcome in South Carolina,” Haley said at a press conference after signing the bill. “Legal immigration is more than welcome.”

More than a decade later, Haley’s record on immigration is under fire as former President Donald Trump seeks to make border policy a key part of his campaign to secure the GOP presidential nomination and defeat President Joe Biden in the general election. As Trump and his allies attempt to paint Haley as weak on border security, the former South Carolina governor is pushing back by leaning into both her immigration record in the state and her vision for future federal policy.

This month, Haley criticized Trump for killing a bipartisan border agreement and delaying reforms until after the election. She has pointed to the time she’s spent on the US border with Mexico and laid out a border plan that would add more border patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, defund sanctuary cities and increase deportations. And she has stressed that when she was governor, her state pushed back on a former Democratic president.

“We passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country,” Haley said this…