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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., center, accompanied by fellow GOP lawmakers, speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 25, 2014, following a GOP caucus lunch.AP

WASHINGTON Twenty-two Republican senators sent a letter to President Obama on Thursday accusing his administration of displaying "an astonishing disregard for the Constitution" by considering administrative changes to the nation's deportations policy.

In a letter to the president, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, and 21 of his colleagues said that changes under consideration would amount to "near complete abandonment of basic immigration enforcement."

"Your actions demonstrate an astonishing disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the rights of American citizens and legal residents," read the letter signed by McConnell and other Republicans, including Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

The Associated Press reported this week that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who is conducting a review ordered by Obama on how to make the administration's policy on deportations more humane, is weighing limiting removals of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who don't have serious criminal records.

The change, if adopted, could shield tens of thousands of immigrants now removed each year solely because they committed repeat immigration violations, such as re-entering the country illegally after having been deported, failing to comply with a deportation order or missing an immigration court date.

With comprehensive immigration legislation stalled in the GOP-led House 10 months after Senate passage, Obama is under intense pressure from immigrant advocates to act on his own to curb deportations and allow some of the 11.5 million immigrants in the country illegally to stay here.

The move would fall short of the sweeping changes sought by activists who want Obama to expand a two-year-old program that grants work permits to certain immigrants brought here illegally as children to include other groups, such as the parents of any children born in the U.S.

Thursday's letter, circulated by the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, underscores the political risk in an election year as Republicans seize on the review as the latest example of presidential overreach.

"Our entire constitutional system is threatened when the executive branch suspends the law at its whim and our nation's sovereignty is imperiled when the commander in chief refuses to defend the integrity of its borders," the senators wrote.

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