Obama finally got fed up in early March, when Murguia called him the “deporter in chief.” There are rules for attacking friends in Washington, but to White House officials, she did it all wrong. First, neither the president nor his aides first heard the broadside directly from her, but rather through media reports. Second, Murguia personalized the criticism, one senior administration official said.

White House officials, anxious to stem the bleeding, summoned three constituencies to separate meetings with Obama — Congressional Hispanic Caucus leaders, immigration advocacy groups and the Spanish-language media. Obama urged them to back down. He wouldn’t be ready to announce executive actions for several months, anyway, so they needed to turn their full attention back to congressional Republicans, the president said.

In the 90-minute session with immigrant activists, many of the 17 leaders told Obama that it was beyond time for him to act. Obama responded that they needed to remain as committed to passing legislation as he was. Some activists said they took offense to the president’s message and his tone. But the activists didn’t let up either.

“They don’t swoon around him,” said one advocate who attended the meeting and asked to speak anonymously because the session was off the record. “People are viewing it from a deeply moral standpoint. It is coming from their core and that trumps everything to them.”