Trump’s Border Wall May Fade as Obstacle in Immigration Debate

Bloomberg

By Sahil Kapur

January 23, 2018

Trump’s Border Wall May Fade as Obstacle in Immigration Debate

The entrenched sides in the immigration debate consuming Washington are edging toward consensus on one crucial point: President Donald Trump’s border wall may not be all that big of an obstacle.

After the collapse of negotiations on immigration that led to a three-day shutdown of the government, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that his offer on funding for a border barrier was “off the table.” Trump has insisted there can be no deal without a wall, which he promised during his campaign would be “big, beautiful” and paid for by Mexico.

Below the surface, the differences are less about substance and more about message.

“We all understand now that the president is speaking metaphorically as much as anything else,” said John Cornyn, the second-ranking Senate Republican, who is in the middle of the immigration debate. “Sometimes it’s a fence, sometimes it’s a wall, sometimes it’s a barrier. But it’s always part of a system which includes technology, which includes personnel.”

The activists pressuring Democrats to hold firm on their immigration priorities have begun viewing it the same way. They say that as long as it’s not a concrete wall spanning the entire U.S.-Mexico border — which no one sees as feasible — it’s not a deal-breaker. The lawmakers and activists would prefer to make concessions on border security than on cutting legal immigration or stepping-up interior enforcement.

Metaphor for Security

“For Democrats the wall is stupid, offensive, wasteful — a monument to Donald Trump’s vanity and ego,” said Frank Sharry, who runs the pro-immigration group America’s Voice. “But even Republicans have started talking about the wall as a metaphor for border security.”

Sharry said additional border security inevitably will be part of any legislation sought by Democrats and some Republicans that extends protection from deportation for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, that Trump is ending.

“Donald Trump is going to claim it’s a down payment on his wall,” he said. “And I predict that such a wall will never be built. Fencing? Yes. Repairs? Yes. Vehicular barriers? Yes.”

Even so, on Tuesday night, Trump wrote on Twitter that “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer fully understands, especially after his humiliating defeat, that if there is no Wall, there is no DACA.”

Trump, after all, did win the election and Democrats are now willing to make concessions — at least rhetorically — on an issue they once regarded as abhorrent. Last April, Schumer mocked the wall on the Senate floor as a “pointless waste of taxpayer money” that “will endanger the prospects of the bill passing and raise the prospects of a government shutdown.”

Different Messages

So a solution could include additional money for border security that Democrats can argue is not really a wall while Trump can assure his base that he’s begun delivering on his campaign promise to erect it.

Trump and his aides have sent sometimes conflicting messages on the wall. When campaigning for office, Trump painted a picture of an impervious, fortified barrier along the border. Some of the prototypes constructed for evaluation south of San Diego are imposing structures of steel and concrete as much as 30-feet high.

Trump himself said in a Wall Street Journal interview published Jan. 11 that “The wall’s never meant to be 2,100 miles long. We have mountains that are far better than a wall. We have violent rivers that nobody goes near.”

He’s also said it would need to be “see-through” in places.

The White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said on Fox News last week that Trump has “evolved” on immigration toward what’s politically possible. Trump, however, followed with a Twitter posting, “If there is no Wall, there is no Deal!”

Haggling on Price

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Tuesday that Trump wants “serious border security” — without specifying a wall — as part of a DACA resolution, and added that the two parties are largely haggling over the price.

“Border security — Democrats may not agree on the exact amount, but they certainly agree that there is a need for that in their willingness to do that,” Sanders said.

For those who favor more restrictive immigration policy, matters like requiring employers to verify whether someone can work legally take precedence over a wall.

“A border wall is less important than E-Verify should be,” said Mark Krikorian, who runs the Center For Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for less immigration. But whatever the solution, he said, Trump is “going to go around saying it’s a wall — and some of it is going to have to be an actual concrete wall.”

If Democrats can accept that, it shouldn’t stand in the way of a deal, he said.

Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, said Tuesday that border security “must be on the table, we all agree on that. If there’s going to be more wall because all the experts say that’s what it takes to secure our border, we’re with it.”

Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — who like Manchin faces a re-election campaign in a state Trump won handily — said she prefers the term “border security” to border wall and favors more money toward the concept.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat for whom an immigration overhaul is a signature issue, said Schumer pulling back the wall funding offer means “we’re going to start negotiations anew, with a clean slate.”

But border security and a physical barrier are still part of the mix.

“It’s part of the negotiation,” Durbin said. “We can bring all those issues up.”

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