President Obama Slams 'Heartbreaking' Supreme Court Immigration Decision: 'It Takes Us Further from the Country We Aspire to Be'

President Obama said Thursday that the Supreme Court's decision to block his plan to defer the deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants was "frustrating" and indicative of the court's inability "to function the way it is supposed to."

Obama spoke out about the court's 4-4 deadlock – which effectively blocked his executive action on immigration – at a press conference on Thursday, saying, "Our founders conceived this country as refuge for the world. Welcoming wave after wave of immigrants kept us youthful and dynamic and entrepreneurial. It has shaped our character and it has made us stronger."

"But for more than two decades now our immigration system, everybody acknowledges, has been broken. And the fact that the Supreme Court wasn't able to issue a decision today doesn't just set the system back further, it takes us further from the country that we aspire to be."

The case will now return to a lower court in Texas that initially halted Obama from launching the new program that would grant deferred action status to undocumented immigrants who have children who are American citizens or have green cards.

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The president criticized Congress Republicans for failing to push through comprehensive immigration reform during his presidency, and said the that the future of immigration policy now depends on voters electing the next president.

"They are allowing partisan politics to jeopardize something as fundamental as the impartiality and integrity of our judicial system," Obama said of Republicans in Congress. "Americans should not let that stand."