By Ed O'Keefe, David Nakamura and Mike DeBonis
February 14 at 3:08 PM - The Washington Post
President Trump fully embraced a Republican plan Wednesday to significantly change decades-old immigration policy and rejected any other proposals to resolve the fate of undocumented young immigrants, undercutting bipartisan negotiations on a possible solution that might prevail in the closely divided Senate.
In a White House statement, Trump urged the Senate to back the proposal, saying it accomplishes his vision for immigration. At the same time, the president rejected any limited approach that deals only with “dreamers” — immigrants who have been in the country illegally since they were children — and border security.
Trump’s full-throated ultimatum and endorsement of legislation unveiled this week by a GOP group led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) was issued just minutes before bipartisan senators gathered again to strike a possible deal to resolve the intractable issue.
“Coincidence?” quipped Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has led the talks with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and others since the start of a three-day partial government shutdown last month.
Asked to respond to Trump’s ultimatum, Collins said, “I know that the president wants a result, and my experience in the Senate is that you’re more likely to be able to get a result when you have a bipartisan plan — and that’s what we’re seeking.”
Aides to the group were finalizing the text of legislation that they planned to present to colleagues later Wednesday and early Thursday in hopes it can earn a vote. But even if the senators unveil a long-anticipated proposal, there is no guarantee that it can earn the requisite 60 votes needed to advance legislation.
Trump’s latest warning might also deter senators in both parties who are already anxious about debating such an emotionally fraught issue at the start of an election year.
Trump said in his statement that he is “asking all senators, in both parties, to support the Grassley bill and to oppose any legislation that fails to fulfill these four pillars — that includes opposing any short-term ‘Band-Aid’ approach.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also has backed the GOP plan, and most Republicans were rallying behind the proposal by Grassley and six other GOP senators.
It fulfills Trump’s calls to provide legal status to 1.8 million dreamers, immediately authorizes spending at least $25 billion to bolster defenses along the U.S.-Mexico border, makes changes to family-based legal immigration programs and ends a diversity lottery system used by immigrants from smaller countries.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who is gauging support for a House immigration bill that is much more restrictive than Trump’s proposal, told reporters Wednesday that the White House plan “should be the framework through which we come together to find a solution.”
“The president did a very good job of putting a very sincere offer on the table,” he said.
Ryan said the House bill, which includes numerous provisions outside the scope of the White House plan and has been entirely rejected by Democrats, could constitute “a House Republican position . . . we can start from for negotiations.”
On a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials said the president had made significant concessions to Senate Democrats. Last fall, Trump to action to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which had provided temporary work permits to about 690,000 dreamers. White House officials emphasized that Trump’s plan allows far more dreamers to pursue the path to citizenship.
But they added that the border security provisions and the cuts to legal immigration channels are required to stem unauthorized immigration, reduce a lengthy backlog in the green-card process and reduce immigration levels that, the White House argues, have harmed American workers.
“Democrats say, ‘Less for Americans, more for illegal immigrants,’ ” said one administration official, who like the others on the call spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations. “We went as far as we could in that direction, but any more and the House would never take up the bill and the president would not be able to sign it. It would be a waste of the Senate’s time and a waste of Americans’ time.”
At the Capitol, the president’s allies also defended his plan.
“President Trump has crafted a deal that is tough but more than generous,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), an ardent Trump defender and sponsor of the Grassley plan.
The president “wants this solved,” Perdue added. “And he wants it ended right now.”
At a House Budget Committee hearing Wednesday, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said several times that the Trump administration’s fiscal 2019 budget presumes that DACA will be permanently replaced by a new program.
Lawmakers have been negotiating under the premise that the bulk of DACA work permits will begin to expire March 5 — a deadline Trump set last fall aimed at giving Congress time to develop a legislative solution for the dreamers. But judges in California and New York have issued temporary injunctions, requiring the Trump administration to restart the program.
The Department of Homeland Security has done so, and the Justice Department has taken the unusual step of petitioning the Supreme Court to hear the case without it going through the standard appeals process. The high court could announce as early as Friday whether it will do so or kick the matter back to the lower courts, which could mean a longer process until the matter is resolved.
Democrats strongly oppose the Grassley plan.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the bill unfairly targets family-based immigration and that making such broad changes as part of a plan to legalize fewer than 2 million people “makes no sense.”
Meanwhile, Trump said he is “encouraged” by ongoing attempts to build support for the more conservative immigration overhaul plan introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). House GOP leaders planned to spend Wednesday whipping potential support for the bill, which is opposed by many Republicans because of its aggressive border security policy and the potential to upend industries reliant on immigrant labor, particularly agriculture.
In the Senate, McConnell has said that he wants debate on immigration to wrap up by Friday, when Congress is scheduled to leave for a week-long recess. But members of both parties said the debate is likely to continue well beyond this week.
“It’s going to take a while. This is a complicated thing,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “Isn’t this what people always want, to have a Senate that works and comes up with ideas and has a debate? This is the way the system was designed.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the bipartisan group led by Collins, said he supports the Grassley plan but knows it may not earn sufficient support.
“We want to make sure if we’re able to — if we’re not successful in that attempt, to look at other alternatives,” he said. “We’re just trying to cover all the bases.”
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) warned that the congressional debate was veering too far from the most urgent concern — legalizing the status of dreamers, many of whom are set to lose legal protections when DACA expires next month.
“I’m hearing less and less about dreamers and more and more about spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars on a useless wall that President Trump promised Mexico would pay for,” he said. He added later that issues not directly related to the fate of dreamers are “political catchphrases designed to incite fear and push policies that forever change how legal immigration works in the United States.”
Ryan, citing recent federal court rulings that have placed the cancellation of the DACA program on hold, said there was no imminent need to find a solution before the deadline set by Trump.
“It’s not as important as it was before, given the court rulings, but I think this place works better with deadlines, and we want to operate on deadlines,” he said. “We clearly need to address this issue in March. I’ll just leave it at that.”
Erica Werner contributed to this report.