On the Campaign Trail, Obama and Romney React to the Justices’ Decision

President Obama in Durham, N.H., on Monday at the start of a two-day campaign swing. 

Rick Gorka, Mitt Romney’s traveling press secretary, speaking to reporters on a chartered plane.

For Mr. Obama, both parts of the court’s split decision — striking down most of the law while letting stand the most controversial provision, which critics have dubbed “show me your papers” — have the potential to encourage get-out-the-vote efforts. He appealed to voters worried about racial profiling, given that the provision of the law the court let stand requires police offers to check for proof of legal residence.

“No American should ever live under a cloud of suspicion just because of what they look like,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Romney, who was visiting Arizona for a fund-raising event, used the ruling to appeal to conservatives concerned about border security.

“I believe that each state has the duty — and the right — to secure our borders and preserve the rule of law, particularly when the federal government has failed to meet its responsibilities,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Romney is trying to retain the base of his party that supports cracking down on illegal immigrants while appealing to Hispanics in swing states like Colorado, Florida and Virginia.

After a Republican primary race in which the rhetoric focused on securing the border and what Mr. Romney called “self-deportation,” the presumptive Republican nominee attempted to change his tone last week at a national gathering of Latino elected and appointed officials. He pledged to raise quotas on green cards and support a path to legal status for young immigrants who serve in the military.

His outreach efforts came after an order by Mr. Obama to lift deportation threats for a much larger group of illegal immigrants, including those pursuing college.

Some Republican strategists feared that Mr. Romney’s gesture was too little, too late.

“I think Romney made a huge mistake by avoiding immigration for so long, and then Obama showed up and raised the stakes,” said Ana Navarro, an adviser to Senator John McCain on Hispanic issues during his 2008 bid for the presidency. “Between Obama’s immigration policy announcement two weeks ago and this Arizona law decision, the base is much more energized than they were five months ago.”

In a sign that some national Republicans want to see more bridges built on immigration, Crossroads GPS, an independent advocacy group co-founded by Karl Rove, announced its support on Monday for a bipartisan bill in Congress that would let foreign-born students in technology and science stay and work in the country.

But a prominent view in the Romney campaign is that he has no need to further court Hispanics on immigration. A new survey from Gallup on Monday showed that Latino voters ranked immigration only fifth in importance, behind health care and a host of economic concerns.

Mr. Obama’s message on Monday seemed directed at Hispanics who have lived in fear of the law, vowing to “continue to use every federal resource to protect the safety and civil rights of all Americans,” a politically significant aside that could help him at the voting booth in November, Latino leaders said.

“You may not be doing anything wrong, but depending on the color of your skin, you can be pulled over,” said Anna Tovar, an Arizona state legislator from a district outside Phoenix that is 80 percent Hispanic. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

While many Democrats nationwide say they are not sure whether Mr. Obama has a chance to win Arizona, traditionally a Republican stronghold, Ms. Tovar said the Supreme Court decision could help him.

It could also bolster his chances in other Western states with large Hispanic populations like Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada.

“One of the consequences of this is it puts the Romney camp into a more Midwestern strategy, looking at states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and trying to win there instead of in places like Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico,” said Dario V. Moreno, a political scientist at Florida International University.

At his fund-raiser in Phoenix, Mr. Romney attacked the president for what he said was a lack of leadership on immigration and repeatedly called the court’s decision “a muddle.”

“I would have preferred to see the Supreme Court give more latitude to the states, not less,” he said.

The Romney campaign’s attitude, though, seemed to be that this too shall pass. One adviser on Hispanic issues said he expected the advantage to Mr. Obama to last a day or so, until an even weightier Supreme Court ruling, on the president’s health care law, lands later this week.

The Romney campaign chartered a plane big enough for the traveling press corps so that reporters would be on hand this week for Mr. Romney’s reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling in that highly charged case.

But on Monday, when reporters asked repeatedly if Mr. Romney would discuss the immigration ruling, his traveling press secretary, Rick Gorka, said, “Probably not.”

Asked why Mr. Romney chartered a plane to comment on one court ruling but not another, Mr. Gorka replied, “We were very clear that this was about Obamacare.”