WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he is open to a path to citizenship for some younger undocumented immigrants in an immigration deal being negotiated by Congress, provided he gets billions of dollars for a border wall and other security upgrades.
The president said his plan, to be released Monday, would grant the 690,000 immigrants covered by an Obama-era deferred action program Trump terminated last fall provisional legal status. That group would then be eligible to pursue full citizenship over a period of 10 to 12 years, Trump told reporters during an impromptu discussion at the White House.
Trump also intends to ask for $25 billion for a border wall and said he wanted $5 billion for additional border security, though it was unclear if that money was separate from the wall funding. The White House also will continue to push for cuts to legal immigration, including an end to a diversity visa lottery.
Trump joked to Chief of Staff John Kelly that he hoped to have a deal by the time he got back from a two day trip to Davos, Switzerland, for an economic forum.
Trump terminated Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in September but gave lawmakers six months to find a legislative solution. The program granted two-year work permits to immigrants who have been in the country illegally since they were children, a group known as “dreamers.”
White House officials said their initial proposal would be limited to the 690,000 who were enrolled in DACA when Trump terminated. However, Democrats and some Republicans have pushed to extend legal protections to a far larger group of dreamers – up to 1.7 million or more. White House officials said that would be left to Congress to negotiate. The White House intends to release a new immigration “framework” Monday that officials said would satisfy Trump’s demands in the stalled congressional negotiations over the fate of younger immigrants known as “dreamers.”
Lawmakers face a Feb. 8 deadline for a must-pass spending bill to keep open the government, but Democrats and some Republicans have said they will not support a long-term deal that does not address the future of DACA.
Despite the White House statement that said Trump has consulted with Republican and Democratic leaders, Democratic congressional leadership has not been consulted about what the White House plans to release on Wednesday, according to senior aides.
The White House announcement on immigration came as 35 senators gathered late Wednesday to figure out how the chamber will proceed on its immigration debate. Meeting in the hearing room for the Senate Armed Services Committee, the group of Democrats and Republicans asked Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to serve as a clearinghouse and sort out the parameters and timetable for the debate.
Both senators are the deputy leaders of their respective parties and sit on a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on immigration policy.
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., who co-chaired a series of meetings before and during the three-day government shutdown in an attempt to end the impasse, will continue hosting meetings on the subject in the coming days, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another key broker on the subject.
“We have created a process for input. The goal is to create an output that’s good for America,” Graham said in a statement.
Earlier Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the new White House immigration plan will “represents a compromise that members of both parties can support. We encourage the Senate to bring it to the floor.”
The plan, she said, would deal with four areas Trump has focused on – increasing border security, ending a diversity visa lottery program, curbing legal immigration channels for families of U.S. citizens and providing legal status for DACA recipients.
“We’ve had dozens of conversations with them,” Sanders said of lawmakers. “And the framework that you see Monday will be born out of a lot of those conversations that we’ve had with a number of members, both Republicans, Democrats, House and Senate.”
Yet Sanders declined to offer specifics, and it was unclear whether the White House would release detailed plans or general guidelines. Late last year, the White House sent a long list of immigration principles meant to inform Congress members of Trump’s priorities but lacking specifics. Trump said during a meeting with a large group of lawmakers at the White House two weeks ago that he would sign whatever plan Congress sent him.
A bipartisan group in the Senate led by Durbin and Graham presented a proposal to Trump last week that attempted to address his concerns. It included $1.6 billion for a wall and offered a path to citizenship for dreamers. Trump has rejected that plan. The president also didn’t reach a deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who reportedly offered far more money for the border wall.
The lack of a deal on immigration led to an impasse over a spending bill and resulted in a partial government shutdown Saturday before lawmakers voted Monday to extend funding three more weeks. If they fail to agree on a spending plan by Feb. 8, the government could shut down again.
“We’ve taken into account all of the conversations that we’ve had, both at the presidential and the staff level, and tried to incorporate that into what we think addresses all of the different things that we’ve heard from the various stakeholders throughout the last several months,” Sanders said.
“After decades of inaction by Congress, it’s time we work together to solve this issue once and for all,” she added. “The American people deserve no less.”
The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.