President Barack Obama announced his decision to delay taking executive action on immigration reform until after November congressional elections, according to The Associated Press.
Obama promised in a high-profile White House appearance in June to announce unilateral measures by the end of summer if Congress did not enact immigration reform legislation, but Obama said the surge of nearly 63,000 children from Central America crossing the border to the United States in the past year had made Americans wary of new immigration measures, the AP reported.
"The truth of the matter is that the politics did shift mid-summer because of that problem," Obama said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" set to air on Sunday, according to the AP.
Obama said he plans to act later this year after making more of a public case for his actions, which are expected to remove the threat of deportation for some of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, the AP reported.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who is in a tight midterm race himself, called the decision cynical, according to the AP.
"He's just saying he'll go around the law once it's too late for Americans to hold his party accountable in the November elections," the Kentucky senator said in a statement, the AP reported.
Republicans blamed the flood of migrant children coming across the border on Obama's 2012 decision to grant temporary legal status to some undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, according to the AP.
Obama said that without legislation from Congress, he would take steps to increase border security, upgrade the processing of border crossers and encourage legal immigration, the AP reported. He also said he would offer immigrants who have been illegally in the United States for some time a way to become legal residents, pay taxes, pay a fine and learn English.
