Washington: President Barack Obama, in an interview broadcast on Sunday, said he rejects Republican criticism that he has exceeded his authority in moving to spare millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, adding that he has been “very restrained” in his use of executive authority.

Angry Republican lawmakers have accused Obama of unconstitutional, even imperial, overreach. They have pointed to past remarks in which he himself suggested that his powers to act were limited.

But Obama, in the interview aired on Sunday on the ABC News programme This Week, said that history was on his side. Both Democratic and Republican presidents, going back decades, had taken similar actions, he said.

“The history is that I have issued fewer executive actions than most of my predecessors, by a long shot,” he said in the interview, which was taped on Friday. “The difference is the response of Congress — and specifically the response of some of the Republicans.”

He said historians of the modern presidency would confirm that he had “actually been very restrained”.

Obama has framed his action not as an amnesty for some undocumented immigrants but as a directive, in part, to federal agencies to focus their attention on those with criminal records, not on law-abiding, taxpaying, longtime immigrants. In all, about 5 million of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants would be protected.

“The fact is that we exercise prosecutorial discretion all the time,” he said, adding that Republicans remained free to pass an immigration law that would overturn his own actions.

Obama was also asked in the interview about concerns of possible violence in Ferguson, Missouri, and about the outlines of the 2016 presidential race.

In Ferguson, a grand jury is expected to decide shortly whether to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in the fatal shooting on August 9 of Michael Brown, a black teenager. The FBI has warned of potential violence there and in other cities across the country, depending on the outcome.

Obama urged those in Ferguson to “keep protests peaceful”, but he also envisioned that things might go badly. “You know, we saw during the summer the possibility of even overwhelmingly peaceful crowds being overrun by a few thugs who might be looking for an excuse to loot or to commit vandalism,” he said.

The president said he had spoken to Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri to ensure that he had a plan to respond to any violence and “to be able to sort out the vast majority of peaceful protesters form the handful who are not”. More broadly, he said, law enforcement and minority communities across the country needed to find ways to deepen their levels of trust.

Asked whether he might visit Ferguson once the grand jury’s decision becomes public, Obama said he would “wait and see how the response comes about”.

The president also suggested that he might keep a low profile as the campaign to elect his successor geared up.