Trump shows flexibility on wall as border talks continue

WASHINGTON — Faced with limited options and a looming deadline to prevent another government shutdown, President Donald Trump is moving toward accepting a border-security deal that would fall well short of his once-firm demand for $5.7 billion in funds for a wall at the southwestern frontier.

On Capitol Hill, House and Senate conferees were nearing an agreement that could offer the president between $1.3 billion and around $2 billion in funding for border security, a range, still subject to change, that could include some physical barriers and result in a deal as early as Monday. Talk of a wall has given way to “bollard fencing” and strategic placements.

“We’re 95 to 98 percent done,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Trump has told allies he would grudgingly accept a figure of around $2 billion, but House Democrats remain publicly opposed to spending that much on barriers. It is still not clear how much of the final allocation would go for new fencing, according to three people briefed on the negotiations.

“Throughout the talks, Democrats have insisted that a border security compromise not be overly reliant on physical barriers. We will not agree to $2 billion in funding for barriers,” said Evan Hollander, the communications director for the House Appropriations Committee.

The effort to find some final figure between the House Democrats’ $1.3 billion and a figure slightly higher than $2 billion marks an end game of sorts for high-stakes negotiations aimed at making sure the government does not, once again, close down next weekend.

But the final agreement still has contentious wrinkles to iron out.

While Democrats want as low a number as they can secure, members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, which had earlier pushed Trump to take an uncompromising line on wall funding, met with him on Thursday and indicated that any number even slightly above $2 billion would satisfy them for now.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told senators at a party lunch and in private conversations over the past few days that Trump had told him, “I can live with $2 billion,” according to a Senate aide who witnessed one of the exchanges.

Beyond those numbers, negotiators remain far apart on detention beds under the control of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house families detained at the border with Mexico. Democrats asked to limit the number of beds and increase funds for other alternatives to the practice of family detention; Republicans want substantially more beds.