The Kansas Democratic Party's Carlos Lugo, left, Rep. Louis Ruiz of Kansas City, and chairwoman Joan Wagnon announce plans to recruit and register Hispanic and Latino voters in response to a bill pending in the Legislature that attempts to nullify President Barack Obama's executive orders relaxing immigration policy.

Topeka ? Kansas Democrats on Thursday strongly denounced a bill pending in the Legislature aimed at blocking President Barack Obama’s recent executive orders relaxing immigration enforcement against certain groups of undocumented aliens.

But at the same time, party leaders said, the issue may give them a chance to do something they failed to do effectively during the 2014 elections: mobilize Hispanic and Latino voters.

Senate Bill 166, referred to as the “Rule of Law Restoration Act,” was introduced earlier this month at Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s request. It declares specific “findings” that President Obama violated federal law and the U.S. Constitution when he issued executive orders protecting certain classes of undocumented immigrants from deportation, and therefore they do not preempt the state from acting on its own.

In November, Obama announced that the Department of Homeland Security would not deport undocumented parents of lawful permanent residents or children who had arrived in the U.S. unaccompanied. Those programs are officially known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA; and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

Earlier this week, those executive orders were put on hold by a federal judge in Texas in a lawsuit filed by 26 states, including Kansas, challenging the constitutionality of those orders. But the White House noted that the orders have been upheld by another federal judge in Washington, D.C., and it said the Justice Department will appeal the Texas decision.

Senate Bill 166 would also would make it illegal for any employer in the state of Kansas to knowingly employ or pay wages to an undocumented immigrant. And it would prohibit the state from issuing them drivers licenses or other forms of state identification.

Rep. Luis Ruiz, D-Kansas City, called the bill a “smokescreen” to divert attention away from the state’s budget and revenue crisis, which he said are the result of Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax policies.

“This is just an example of the hate-mongering that we are seeing during this year’s legislative session,” sad Ruiz, the assistant House minority leader and a member of the Hispanic-Latino caucus in the Legislature.

Carlos Lugo, Hispanic outreach director for the Kansas Democratic Party, announced that the party has begun working with immigration attorneys and other Hispanic organizations to set up clinics to help immigrants apply for protection under those programs. He said the first clinic is already operational in Wichita and others will open soon in locations around the state.

Meanwhile, party chairwoman Joan Wagnon said the party will begin focusing its efforts on getting Hispanic and Latino U.S. citizens registered to vote.

“We did not spend a lot of time working on voter registration because of the change that Mr. Kobach has promulgated, and voter rules and the new laws make it incredibly difficult to register people,” Wagnon said. “But we are going to focus on finding and getting all of them to register.”

The failure of Democrats to reach out to Hispanic and Latino voters has been cited by many party insiders as one of the reasons for their devastating losses in 2014, when Republicans won the governor’s race, all statewide and congressional races, and picked up five seats in the Kansas House, despite pre-election polls showing Democrats ahead or tied in many of those races.

According to exit polling conducted by the Associated Press and other news outlets, Hispanic and Latino voters split almost evenly between Brownback and Democrat Paul Davis in the Kansas governor’s race. That was a sharp contrast from 2012, when President Obama, a Democrat, took 71 percent of the Hispanic-Latino vote.

But Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence, said most people in the party have put the 2014 elections behind them.

“November was so long ago, I don’t think anyone has even gone back to November,” Ballard said.