Ryan won’t work with Obama on immigration

House Speaker Paul Ryan is ruling out comprehensive immigration reform while President Barack Obama is in office, pushing the issue until 2017.

The newly elected leader of the Republican-controlled House said in several interviews Sunday that he will not work with Obama saying he went around Congress with an executive order announced last November but put on hold by the courts, that would shield millions of people from deportation. 

Ryan said Obama "can't be trusted" on the issue.

The immigration issue has driven a wedge between Hispanics, an increasingly important voting bloc, and Republicans, many of whom take a hard line on illegal immigration, to the benefit of Obama's fellow Democrats. Most of the migrants in the United States without legal residency are Hispanic.

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who replaced the retired John Boehner as speaker, said he would not try to advance comprehensive immigration legislation while Obama, whose term ends in January 2017, is president.

"I think it would be a ridiculous notion to try and work on an issue like this with a president we simply cannot trust on this issue," Ryan said in an interview aired on the CBS program "Face the Nation."

"He tried to go it alone, circumventing the legislative process with his executive orders, so that is not in the cards. I think if we reach consensus on how best to achieve border and interior enforcement security, I think that's fine," Ryan added.

Ryan acknowledged that he promised the House Freedom Caucus, which includes the most conservative members of the House, not to bring up immigration reform legislation, and blamed Obama.

"This president tried to write the law himself," Ryan told the CNN program "State of the Union", accusing Obama of exceeding his constitutional powers. "Presidents don't write laws. Congress writes laws."

In the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, candidate Donald Trump and others have talked tough about illegal immigration. Trump has promised to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and to deport all illegal immigrants already in the United States.

The Senate in 2013 voted to pass bipartisan legislation for the biggest overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in decades in a generation, but the measure failed to win House approval thanks to opposition by conservative Republicans.

In an interview aired on "State of the Union," Boehner said he regrets immigration reform legislation was not passed while he was speaker.

"Reforming our immigration system, securing our borders would be good for America," said Boehner. "But unfortunately the president just kept poisoning the well — poisoning the well — to the point where it was impossible to put it on the floor of the House."

Wire services