When House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio said that it was unlikely that he could get an immigration bill passed this year, he blamed it on mistrust of President Obama: “The American people, including many of my members, don’t trust that the reform that we’re talking about will be implemented as it was intended to be.”

If ever a statement needed to be translated from the language of politics to the straight talk of reality, that was it. Its only truth is that many of Mr. Boehner’s Republican colleagues revile Mr. Obama and have done so from the moment he entered office — and that leads them to distrust him on everything.

But on immigration reform, they are on a poor footing. If it’s one thing the Obama Administration has been strict about, it has been in enforcing immigrations laws. On the President’s watch, nearly 2 million illegal aliens have been deported.

Mr. Boehner should blame his own colleagues, not Mr. Obama. What he really was saying was this: “Many of my members just can’t bring themselves to pass immigration reform, especially anything that smacks of amnesty, even through the business community and our party’s leaders support it as an essential policy for America — and they don’t care that this will go on hurting our chances with Hispanic voters.”

The Senate passed an immigration overhaul last year, but Mr. Boehner’s House is a house divided between Republicans and Democrats, and between Republicans and Republicans. Rather than work toward a solution, it’s easier for him to blame Prersident Obama. The American people deserve more than this partisan nonsense.

First Published March 11, 2014, 3:28 a.m.