Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said immigration reform legislation will not be discussed during the current 114th Congress.

During a press conference on Thursday, McConnell blames President Barack Obama for congress not moving forward with bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform.

"Not this Congress," McConnell said, in response to the possibility picking up immigration reform in the Senate. "I think when the president took the action he did, after the 2014 election, he pretty much made it impossible for us to go forward with immigration reform this Congress."

The "action" McConnell referred to is the November 2014 executive actions that included the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and creation of the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA), which would provide temporary, but renewable, three-year stays for eligible undocumented immigrants. According to the Obama administration, nearly 4.9 million undocumented immigrants, currently living in the U.S. before January 2010, would be qualified in addition to criteria by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

"The atmosphere for dealing with that issue in the wake of what he did is not appropriate to get the kind of immigration reform that we probably need to address," continued McConnell, adding that the next 115th Congress, in 2017, could act on immigration reform under a different president.

The Senate majority leader was confident in his opposition to Obama's immigration executive actions, citing the ongoing lawsuit by 26 states seeking to block the deferred action programs. As Latin Post reported, then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who has since become the state's governor, filed the lawsuit to block Obama's immigration executive actions. Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas' Brownsville Division granted a temporary injunction in February, which halted the federal government from implementing the updated DACA guidelines and start of DAPA. The case has since moved to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

"The concern that we expressed about that, I think was validated by the fact that he is currently under a court order not to go forward with what he decided to do," said McConnell. "And so the atmosphere for dealing with that issue in the wake of what he did is not appropriate to get the kind of immigration reform that we probably need to address."

McConnell's citing of Obama's executive actions as the reason for not moving forward with immigration reform is similar to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. In previous interviews, Boehner said Obama has "poisoned the well" by using executive authority to act on immigration. Boehner acknowledged that Obama said on 22 previous occasions that the president does not have the authority to act on immigration.

"[Obama's] stirred up the American people in such a way that it would almost be impossible to do immigration reform given the environment that we're dealing with," said Boehner in an interview last month.

In addition to Texas, the 25 states seeking to block the DACA and DAPA programs include Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

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For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Politics Editor Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.

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