Senate derails proposals on immigration
Bipartisan bill, Trump bid fail to get 60 votes needed
WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Senate on Thursday blocked both President Donald Trump’s immigration plan and a bipartisan alternative, a failure that cast doubt on whether Congress will ever resolve the fate of hundreds of thousands of young illegal aliens known as Dreamers.
In a series of afternoon votes, senators failed to muster enough votes for a Republican plan backed by Trump that would have granted legal status to 1.8 million of the young people and spent at least $25 billion to bolster security along the U.S.-Mexico border. It also would have made changes to family-based legal migration programs and ended a diversity lottery system used by immigrants from smaller countries.
The vote for that plan, offered by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was 39-60 — well short of the 60 yes votes needed to move ahead.
The Senate also couldn’t produce enough votes for a bipartisan plan that would legalize the same number of illegal aliens and appropriate $25 billion for southern border security construction projects over the next
— not immediately, as Trump wants. The bill also would have curbed family-based immigration programs, but not to the extent Trump is seeking, and it said nothing about the diversity visa lottery program.
The vote was 54-45. Eight Republicans joined most Democrats in backing that plan, from a group headed by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., but it fell short of the 60 votes needed after the White House threatened a veto and GOP leaders opposed it.
In a tweet shortly before the vote, Trump called that plan a “total catastrophe.”
The failed votes could plunge the nation’s immigration system into further crisis, as Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as children but who now live here illegally, are set to lose legal protections when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is set to end on March 5.
Federal court challenges are ongoing, meaning the program, established under former President Barack Obama, may continue under
legal limbo until June.
The votes underscored the inability of Congress to resolve a problem that has vexed Republican and Democratic administrations despite repeated efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration system. In an election year, lawmakers on both sides found the political pressures insurmountable.
Grassley grew emotional with reporters a day earlier as he appealed to Democrats to support his plan.
“Here’s an opportunity to do something,” Grassley said Wednesday. “We shouldn’t miss this opportunity. We’ve got something that ought to get bipartisan support in the Senate. It’s got the best chance of getting through the House of Representatives, and it’s the only one that you hear talked about that the president will sign.”
Two additional measures were rejected Thursday.
Senators voted down a watered-down bipartisan plan by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Chris Coons, D-Del., that would have granted legal status to Dreamers and provided billions in border security. Also coming up short of the necessary votes was a Republican push, led by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., to punish so-called sanctuary cities, which refuse to help enforce federal immigration laws.
The White House reacted angrily Thursday night, releasing a statement accusing “Schumer Democrats” — referring to Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer — of not being serious about the deferred-action beneficiaries, an immigration overhaul or homeland security.
Schumer, D-N.Y., earlier blasted Trump, saying the president “has not been constructive” during weeks of negotiations on immigration policy and “seems eager to spike the latest bipartisan compromise potentially with a veto.”
Defending the main bipartisan plan, Schumer admitted, “there’s a lot I don’t like in it, believe me. I think the wall will not accomplish anything, will be a terrible waste of money.”
But “compromise is compromise,” Schumer added. “Democrats and Republicans arkansasonline.com/usimmigration
will find provisions they don’t want, wouldn’t include if they had written it. But we have to do our jobs today. We have to rise above our differences, admit that no one will get everything they want and accept painful compromises that come with democratic government.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said the immigration debate must be concluded this week.
ARKANSANS WEIGH IN
Arkansas’ two U.S. senators, John Boozman and Tom Cotton, both helped to derail the main bipartisan immigration proposal.
“We all want to resolve the status of DACA beneficiaries with a long-term fix that ensures we are not right back in this situation again,” Boozman said in a statement. “That solution must address chain migration and the diversity visa lottery program, while providing our nation with desperately-needed, commonsense border security.”
Chain migration refers to the ability of U.S. citizens to sponsor relatives to join them in the United States. Advocates contend that the term is derogatory.
Referring to the rejected Grassley plan, which included all of those elements, the Republican from Rogers said: “Given our mutual goals, it should have passed the Senate in a bipartisan manner. I am disappointed that it did not.”
Cotton criticized Democrats for rejecting the proposal that Trump — as well as Cotton and Boozman — had favored.
“If they were serious, they wouldn’t have shut down the government over DACA only to reject the one bill, endorsed by the president, that would’ve given DACA recipients the legal certainty they need,” he said in a statement, referring to last month’s government shutdown over immigration
disagreements. “There’s broad agreement about how to solve this problem, but we won’t succeed unless the Democrats stop this incessant virtue-signaling and start negotiating in good faith.”
The Republican from Dardanelle urged the House to move forward with a similar piece of legislation that is in line with Trump’s immigration policy.
Arkansas United Community Coalition, which calls itself “Arkansas’ largest state immigrant rights network,” released a statement Thursday denouncing several elements of the Republican immigration framework.
“We oppose ANY cuts to the current legal immigration system, as they are part of the White House’s attempt to implement nativist policies,” it said.
The organization also opposes spending $25 billion on border security, saying it would “put millions of people that live in border communities at risk.”
‘SOME CRAZY PEOPLE’
Ahead of the votes, the White House pressed hard to scuttle the bipartisan immigration plan, and top GOP leaders were doing little to encourage bipartisan accord.
Trump tweeted that the bill “would be a total catastrophe” and reiterated his support for the more conservative alternative proposed by Grassley.
“Voting for this amendment would be a vote AGAINST law enforcement, and a vote FOR open borders,” Trump wrote. “If Dems are actually serious about DACA, they should support the Grassley bill!”
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also said in a statement that the administration “strongly opposes” the proposal unveiled a day earlier.
The plan from the self-anointed “Common Sense Coalition” would have made immigration policy “worse by weakening border security,” Sanders said. If the plan reached Trump’s desk, his advisers would “recommend he veto it,” she added.
In another Thursday morning tweet, Trump appeared to reiterate his calls to end a diversity visa lottery program, which was not mentioned in the bipartisan plan unveiled late Wednesday. The issue of ending the program is what sparked Trump’s expletive-ridden tirade in a January Oval Office meeting with lawmakers.
The Department of Homeland Security said early Thursday that the bipartisan bill “destroys the ability” of the agency to enforce immigration laws and represents an “egregious violation ” of Trump’s immigration framework.
“Instead of helping to secure the border as the President has repeatedly asked Congress to do,” the Homeland Security statement warned, “it would do the exact opposite and make our border far more open and porous.”
Responding to Homeland Security’s statement at a news conference about the bipartisan bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he thought, “Who the hell wrote this? Because it sounded like something that
came from a political hack, not DHS.”
Graham singled out White House domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller, who is driving much of the administration’s opposition to the bipartisan plan.
“There are some crazy people around here. Just shut them out. This is the best shot you’ll ever get,” Graham said. “America is with us, Mr. President. You be with us; we can make this bill better.”
On a conference call with reporters, a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss strategy, lambasted Graham, noting that he was at the center of past immigration debates that ultimately fizzled and suggesting he has been “part of the problem.”
Another administration official, responding to Graham’s attack on the agency’s “fact sheet,” said: “Let the senator know it was written by a group of people at DHS who care deeply about the rule of law.”
The White House official suggested that some Republican co-sponsors had been misled on the bill and indicated that the administration would attempt to pressure them to drop their names from the bill.
“We were surprised to see a bill that proactively went backward in terms of enforcement,” the administration official said. The White House declined two requests from reporters to put the comments on the record.
After Thursday’s vote, Graham said: “It looks like demagogues on the left and the right win again on immigration.”
McConnell dismissed the bipartisan plan in the morning. Democrats so far have “yet to bring forward a single proposal that gives us a realistic chance to make law,” he said. “That is, pass the Senate, pass the House and earn the president’s signature.”
He also blamed Democrats for failing to accept what he said was a “generous” offer from Trump.
Last fall, Trump terminated the deferred-action program, which had provided temporary work permits to about 690,000 Dreamers. Trump set a March 5 deadline for Congress to provide a legislative solution before the bulk of the work permits would begin expiring. However, courts in California and New York have issued temporary injunctions forcing the administration to restart the program, which could render Trump’s deadline moot.
Today, Vice President Mike Pence and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen are scheduled to travel to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. The White House said Pence and Nielsen are scheduled to meet with local law enforcement officials and representatives from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Information for this article was contributed by Ed O’Keefe, David Nakamura, Mike DeBonis and Erica Werner of The Washington Post; by Alan Fram, Kevin Freking and Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press; by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times; and by Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.