Iowa GOP Rep. Steve King tweeted that President Barack Obama invited "a deportable" to his State of the Union address on Tuesday and accused him of undermining "prosecutorial discretion" by allowing an undocumented 20-year-old immigrant to sit next to the first lady.
The tweet was in reference to Ana Zamora, a student from Dallas that the president and first lady invited to hear the address. Zamora's parents are undocumented workers, but she was granted temporary relief in 2012 under the president’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Her parents are potentially eligible to receive temporary relief as well under the executive actions the president took last November.
The tweet comes just days ahead of a summit King is hosting in Des Moines, Iowa, that will be attended by several potential Republican presidential candidates in 2016. King told NBC News he does not think his comment will have a negative impact on Republicans thinking about running.
Asked about the tweet, King told NBC News to "shake it off" and have a sense of humor.
-- NBC's Andrew Rafferty contributed to this report