Obama: Can't wait on immigration law

President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, speaks about immigration Reform, Monday, June 30, 2014, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. The president said he's done waiting for House Republicans to act on immigration. He says he now plans to act on his own. Obama announced his intention Monday to take executive action.  (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, speaks about immigration Reform, Monday, June 30, 2014, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. The president said he's done waiting for House Republicans to act on immigration. He says he now plans to act on his own. Obama announced his intention Monday to take executive action. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Monday said he will order a shift of immigration enforcement resources from the interior of the country toward the southern border as part of a broader effort to use executive actions in the face of Republican refusals to overhaul the nation's immigration laws.

"For more than a year, Republicans in the House of Representatives have refused to allow an up-and-down vote," Obama said at the White House. They are "unwilling to stand up to the Tea Party to do what's best for the country," he said.

White House officials said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, informed the president last week that he would not bring an immigration overhaul to the floor this year. As a result, officials said Obama would vow to use his powers to address longstanding concerns about the effect of deportations on the families of aliens in the U.S. illegally.

"America cannot wait forever for them to act," Obama said of the House.

Obama said he has directed Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to move enforcement resources to the southern U.S. border, to focus on removing undocumented aliens who have committed serious crimes from the country.

The border has seen a surge of illegal aliens, many of them young children from Central American countries.

Obama also sent a letter to Congress on Monday asking for additional authority to deal with the new border issue by quickly deporting the children who have arrived. He said legislation may be needed to increase penalties for people smuggling children into the U.S.

Obama is seeking $2 billion to hire more immigration judges and open more detention facilities, requests that got a cool reception from congressional Republicans and angered advocates.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday blamed "criminal syndicates" for propagating rumors of amnesty that are leading to the influx of Central American children.

The president also directed his staff to send him a set of options on how to "fix as much of our broken immigration system as we can" within his existing authorities. Those recommendations are to be delivered to the president by the end of the summer, officials said.

Obama has been considering broader executive actions that would reduce the number of deportations. But the president's team delayed taking those actions this spring so the executive orders would not interfere with potential congressional action on the issue.

Most measures "will still require an act of Congress," Obama said, adding he will continue to reach out to House Republicans to find a path to legislation. "I am prepared to work with them even on a bill that I don't consider perfect," he said.

Obama's announcement came almost a year after the Senate passed an immigration bill that would have spent billions of dollars to secure the border and offered a path to citizenship for many of the 11.5 million people now here illegally. Despite the efforts of a coalition of businesses, unions, religious leaders, law enforcement officials and others, the GOP-led House never acted on the bill.

"Our country and our economy would be stronger today if House Republicans had allowed a simple yes-or-no vote on this bill or, for that matter, any bill," Obama said. "They'd be following the will of the majority of the American people, who support reform."

Boehner said Monday that the message he gave Obama last week wasn't new.

"I told the president what I have been telling him for months: The American people and their elected officials don't trust him to enforce the law as written," Boehner said in a statement. "Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress."

House Republicans have long said they have no intention of taking up the Senate immigration measure or any single, comprehensive bill.

Instead, Republican leaders outlined guidelines for piecemeal immigration legislation at their annual retreat in January, starting with increased border security and including a path to legal status for undocumented aliens.

Republicans have struggled to find the votes for any immigration bill and haven't yet found an approach that could garner a majority vote from within their party and so far have rejected allowing a vote on legislation that would rely on Democrats for passage.

At the border

Also on Monday, Johnson made his third visit in the past six weeks to the Border Patrol's McAllen station in southern Texas, touring the area with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell. He said 150 more agents are being sent to the region to help deal with the surge.

Johnson has been weighing various additional steps to refocus deportation priorities on people with more serious criminal records, something the administration has already tried to do with mixed results. But advocates are pushing Obama for much more sweeping changes that would shield millions of aliens now here illegally from deportation by expanding a 2-year-old program that granted work permits to certain aliens brought illegally to the U.S. as children.

It's not clear whether the administration will take such steps, but in a meeting with advocates before his announcement Monday, Obama pledged to take "aggressive" steps, according to three people who attended who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Many of those same advocates reacted harshly to Obama's plan to seek money from Congress that would, among other things, help conduct "an aggressive deterrence strategy focused on the removal and repatriation of recent border crossers."

The Border Patrol has apprehended more than 52,000 children traveling on their own since October.

"A policy that speeds up their return at the risk of their due process rights is both heartbreaking and immoral," said Kica Matos, director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, accused Obama of seeking a "blank check" with no real solutions. "President Obama created this disaster at our Southern border, and now he is asking American taxpayers to foot the bill," he said.

Information for this article was contributed by Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; by Angela Greiling Keane, Derek Wallbank and Mike Dorning of Bloomberg News; and by Erica Werner and Jim Kuhnhenn of The Associated Press.

A Section on 07/01/2014

Upcoming Events