Visiting Miami, Obama Presses Republicans on Homeland Security Funding

MIAMI — President Obama called on congressional Republicans on Wednesday to renew financing for the Department of Homeland Security and promised to veto any measure that tried to gut his executive actions on immigration.

“Instead of trying to hold hostage funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is so important for our national security, fund that, and let’s get on with actually passing comprehensive immigration reform,” Mr. Obama told about 270 people at a town-hall-style meeting at Florida International University.

He was referring to Republican efforts to block his immigration plans while still financing most of the department. Their idea is to prevent any money, whether through the appropriations process or through fees collected from immigration applications, from being used for any of the president’s existing or future executive actions on immigration. Homeland Security financing will expire on Friday unless Congress passes, and Mr. Obama signs, a bill to continue providing it.

If Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, “want to have a vote on whether what I’m doing is legal or not, they can have that vote,” Mr. Obama said. “I will veto that vote.”

The administration has filed for an emergency stay of the ruling to let the changes take effect.

A version of this article appears in print on February 26, 2015, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Visiting Miami, Obama Presses Republicans on Homeland Security Funding. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

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