Politico
By Burgess Everett and Rachael Bade
March 14, 2018
President Donald Trump is floating a short-term deal protecting some young immigrants facing deportation in exchange for border wall funding, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
White House officials told House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other GOP leaders that Trump would be open to an immigration trade-off as part of a massive, must-pass spending bill funding the government through September. It would include several years’ worth of funding for a border wall in exchange for protections for Dreamers.
Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson of Wisconsin confirmed “there’s been a lot of talk” about an immigration compromise in the omnibus spending bill and said he’d support it.
But attaching such a deal to a government funding bill slated for passage next week could prove tricky. For one, there is no longer a deadline on the expiring Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals program since the Obama-era program is mired in the courts. So lawmakers might feel little impetus to compromise.
More important, Congress is on a tight schedule. The government runs out of money on March 23, leaving lawmakers little time to hash out a deal on one of the most controversial issues of this Congress.
“I don’t think this is going to be the resolution of the DACA issue,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas). “I just don’t see the DACA issue being resolved in the next week.”
Indeed, some Republicans worry the late push from the White House could set back weeks of work on the omnibus package. Work on the spending bill is nearing conclusion and a late effort to inject a fight over immigration could topple the bill, they fear.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) declined to comment on whether Democrats would go along with providing money for a border wall. Democrats have been reluctant to go there without a permanent solution for Dreamers.
Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) did not rule out a potential compromise but said Trump is “totally unreliable” and couldn’t be trusted to follow through.
The Washington Post first reported the push from the White House.
Trump’s latest approach largely mirrors an idea from Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a Trump rival, who wants to extend DACA protections for three years in exchange for three years of wall funding. Flake said House and Senate Republicans could fall in line if Trump takes the lead.
“That seems to be the best formula out there,” Flake said. “If he goes for it I think a lot of them will be for it.“
House Republican sources said the president would have to fully embrace the proposal and push for it. Conservatives would likely balk, but GOP leaders don’t necessarily need their votes if some Democrats support it.
The proposal would drastically scale back the White House’s most recent demands on immigration. In exchange for a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented young adults who came to the U.S. as children, Trump had asked for $25 billion in border wall funding as wells as a steep reduction in legal immigration.
Such a deal would mean Trump relinquishes his demand for an end to the visa diversity lottery program as well as so-called “family unification” policies that allow immigrants to bring their relatives to the U.S.
Democrats would also lose out on their No. 1 request: a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. Such a plan would merely set the timer back several years.
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