Newt Gingrich took a stance on immigration unpopular with many in the Republican party in a primary debate Tuesday night, and will now have to wait to see if he is punished for it by conservatives.

Gingrich, who has come from the back of the pack in the Republican presidential primary to lead in many national polls, refused to play along with the idea — expressed implicitly by some other candidates — that the only solution to the problem of undocumented immigration is to deport the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S.

“I don’t see how the — the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter century,” Gingrich said. “And I’m prepared to take the heat for saying, let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.”

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