While it’s easy to forget now—in the age of Trump, the 2012 election feels like neolithic history—Romney was actually quite restrictionist when he ran for president. In fact, immigration was arguably the one issue on which he successfully outflanked primary opponents like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry on the right. In a truly epic twist of irony, when Romney lost the general election, Trump himself criticized him for being too “mean-spirited” with his immigration rhetoric.

“He had a crazy policy of self-deportation which was maniacal,” Trump told Newsmax at the end of 2012. “It sounded as bad as it was, and he lost all of the Latino vote.”

Many assumed at the time that Romney was simply pandering to the Republican base to win the primary. But the evidence suggests that his hardline immigration stance is sincerely held.

Take, for example, this little-noticed Salt Lake Tribune interview from last month, in which Romney offered a slightly more expansive version of the remarks that got so much attention this week:

I welcome legal immigrants to our country, and those who follow the process and come here legally are welcome and if they become citizens they’re as much an American citizen as anybody else. At the same time, we have to stop illegal immigration. I was probably more conservative on that than most Republicans. I won’t mention names but I was not in favor of the DREAM Act. Now that’s water under the bridge. President Obama made representations with regards to the Dreamers that have changed circumstances. But I’m pretty hard on stopping illegal immigration and that meant, for me, we need to have a border fence or wall or whatever you want to call it. We need to put in place a very effective e-verify system and heavily penalize companies that hire folks who are here illegally. I also agree with the president that we should stop the chain-migration approach that immigration has taken. And I think he’s right about this lottery program. But I don’t think we’re far apart on immigration. That’s probably a part of where I’m more conservative than most.

The interview suggests that his campaign’s statement on DACA wasn’t just a hasty walk-back from an unexpected gaffe—it was consistent with his apparent belief that, while President Obama should not have instituted the DACA policy in the first place, recipients are now owed some protection.

But in a broader sense, the interview also makes clear that Romney has not shed his immigration hawkishness since 2012. On virtually every policy question—from e-verify to the border wall to chain migration—he holds a position similar to Trump’s.

As others have noted, Romney has no obvious political reason to remind voters of this in Utah. A poll conducted last fall found that an overwhelming majority of Utahns—including even those who identify as “very conservative”—believe DACA recipients should be able to stay in the U.S. This is in keeping with other research that finds Mormon voters have significantly more moderate views on immigration than other elements of the Republican base—one of many reasons Trump struggled to win the state in 2016.