January vowed for DACA vote
Flake: It’s McConnell’s word
WASHINGTON — The fate of hundreds of thousands of people living in the U.S. illegally and facing deportation will be decided next year, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Wednesday.
Flake said he received assurances from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that the Senate will vote in January on bipartisan legislation. The promise came in talks with the GOP leader on Flake’s backing for the tax bill.
“While I would have written a much different bill, this bill lowers the corporate tax rate in a manner that makes us globally competitive,” Flake said in a statement.
The White House and lawmakers are working out details of the immigration bill, but Flake said in an interview that the legislation will broadly address border security, asylum policy and a fix for illegal aliens living in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
At issue is President Donald Trump’s decision to rescind the President Barack Obama’s executive order creating the program, which gave protected status to about 800,000 of those immigrants. Many were brought here as infants or children and have known no other country except the U.S.
In scrapping the order, Trump gave Congress until March to come up with a legislative solution.
Flake said he and other lawmakers have worked with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and other administration officials. Kelly outlined a list of White House priorities at a meeting on Tuesday and pledged to present a detailed list by Friday of border security and other policy changes it wants as part of a broader deal on the deferred-action participants, Flake said.
“The White House is committed to moving forward in good faith,” he said, calling the administration’s plans “eminently reasonable and well thought-out.”
Flake, a frequent Trump critic, said he has been impressed by Trump’s commitment to protect the deferred-action participants.
“The president’s instincts are better than the advice he sometimes gets,” Flake said. “He says he wants to protect these kids. I believe him.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who wanted to find a remedy this year, said in a statement that he was thankful for Flake’s efforts to keep the measure alive. But Durbin did not immediately agree to a January timetable.
“Bipartisan negotiations continue and we’re fighting to pass this measure soon,” Durbin said.
While Flake said he is confident the Senate will vote, it remains unclear whether the House will back such legislation. In 2013, the Senate supported a bipartisan bill overhauling the immigration system and providing a path to citizenship for about 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. The measure
died in the Republican-led House.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has said that deporting the young immigrants is “not in our nation’s interest.” Ryan has said any immigration solution must include border security measures, though he said a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, which Trump has urged, doesn’t make sense.
Flake also played down the idea of a wall encompassing the 2,000-mile-long border, saying “the wall is kind of a metaphor for border security.”
In reality, the border measure will include fencing and other barriers, including sensors and other high-tech security techniques, he said.
Under the deferred-action program, the participants get two-year permits that let them work and remain in the country. Trump rescinded the program this year, but he let immigrants renew their documents if those documents were set to expire between September and March.
The government said 132,000 of the 154,000 eligible renewals applied before an October deadline, leaving more than 20,000 without any protection from deportation.
Meanwhile Wednesday, a federal judge grilled an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice over the Trump administration’s justification for ending the deferred-action program, saying many people had come to rely on it and faced a “real” and “palpable” hardship from its loss.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said former Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy gave people the chance to work and made them “contributing, taxpaying members of the economy.”
“Isn’t that a huge thing to have so many people being a legitimate part of the economy?” the judge said at a court hearing in San Francisco.
Alsup is considering five lawsuits seeking to block Trump from rescinding the program. He also is considering a government request to dismiss the suits. He did not immediately issue a ruling Wednesday.
Alsup had ordered the Trump administration to turn over all emails, letters and other documents it considered in its decision to end the deferred-action program, but the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday tossed out his ruling.
The justices said the lower court must consider other issues before tackling whether officials must release the documents. The high court said its move wasn’t an indication of its views on the merits of either side.