GOP casts about for solution to political problem
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday told House Republicans he is “1,000 percent” behind their rival immigration bills, providing no clear path as party leaders searched for a way to defuse the escalating controversy over family separations at the southern border.
And it’s uncertain if Trump’s support will be enough to push any legislation through the divided GOP House majority.
GOP lawmakers, increasingly fearful of a voter backlash in November, met with Trump for about an hour Tuesday evening at the Capitol to try to find a solution that both holds to Trump’s hard-line immigration policy and ends the practice of taking migrant children from parents charged with entering the country illegally. Many lawmakers say Trump could simply reverse the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy and keep families together.
While Trump held firm to his tough immigration stance in an
earlier appearance Tuesday, he acknowledged during the closed-door meeting that the coverage of family separations is taking a toll. Trump said his daughter, Ivanka, had told him the situation with the families looks bad, one lawmaker said.
“He said, ‘Politically, this is bad,’” said Rep. Randy Weber, R-Texas. “It’s not about the politics; this is the right thing to do.”
As Trump walked out of the session in the Capitol basement, he was confronted by about a half-dozen House Democrats. CNN reported that they were members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and some held signs that read “Families Belong Together.” Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the chair of the caucus, was among the members who protested.
Leaders in both the House and Senate are struggling to shield the party’s lawmakers from the public outcry over images of children taken from migrant parents and held in cages at the border. But they are running up against Trump’s shifting views on specifics and his determination, according to advisers, not to look soft on his signature immigration issue, the border wall.
Even if Republicans manage to pass an immigration bill through the House, which is a tall order, the fight is all but certain to fizzle in the Senate.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader from New York, was adamant that Trump can end the family separations on his own and that legislation is not needed. Without Democratic support, Republicans cannot muster the 60 votes needed to move forward on legislation.
In the House, GOP leaders scrambled Tuesday to produce a revised version of the broader immigration bill that would keep children in detention longer than now permitted — but with their parents. The major change unveiled Tuesday would loosen rules that now limit how long minors can be held to 20 days, according to a GOP source familiar with the measure. Instead, the children could be detained indefinitely with their parents.
The revision would also give the Department of Homeland Security authority to use $7 billion in border technology funding to pay for family detention centers, the person said.
In the Senate, meanwhile, Republicans are rallying behind a different approach. Theirs is narrow legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that would allow detained families to stay together in custody while expediting their hearings and possible deportation proceedings.