New York Times News Service

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Tuesday indirectly targeted former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in a get-tough-with-immigration campaign commercial that kept the issue in the spotlight in the fight for the 2008 Republican nomination.

Romney's campaign radio commercial in the early battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire challenged the "sanctuary policies" of "cities like Newark, San Francisco and New York" that bar local police from alerting federal immigration authorities about arrests of undocumented immigrants.

At least 32 communities and counties nationwide have adopted sanctuary policies, according to a 2006 study by the Congressional Research Service. The cities include: Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Baltimore, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, Austin and Seattle.

"Sanctuary cities become magnets that encourage illegal immigration and undermine secure borders," Romney's campaign ad said.

The commercial did not mention Giuliani by name. But the Romney campaign provided a brief summary of a 2003 hearing by the House Judiciary Committee into New York City's sanctuary policy that said that Giuliani, as mayor of New York City in the 1990s, had extended a 1989 executive order that ordered police not to notify federal immigration authorities about the arrests of undocumented immigrants.

The restriction was designed to encourage undocumented immigrants to contact police about crimes without fear of deportation.

Romney's ad began six days after Giuliani started airing a radio commercial in Iowa and New Hampshire that voiced support for construction of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and for deporting undocumented immigrants who commit crimes.

"A person who comes here illegally and commits a crime should be thrown out of the country," Giuliani said.

Another Republican candidate, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said officials in Newark, N.J., share partial blame for the execution-style murders of three students on Aug. 4 because they failed to deport two of the murder suspects - both undocumented immigrants who had been arrested for earlier crimes.

"If the alleged assailants are found guilty of these brutal crimes, Newark and its political leadership share a degree of culpability," said Tancredo, who has made illegal immigration his hallmark issue.