Bills to protect ‘Dreamers’ stall on Senate floor after veto threat
WASHINGTON — The latest attempt at immigration reform, including protections to prevent “Dreamers” from being deported, collapsed in the Senate on Thursday as a bipartisan bill seen as having the best chance at passage failed to get enough support to advance.
President Donald Trump had threatened to veto the bill — which shielded the young immigrants in exchange for $25 billion in border security — because it did not include the curbs on legal immigration he sought.
The breakdown in the Senate probably leaves the fate of Dreamers — immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children — in the hands of federal courts. Two judges have temporarily blocked Trump from ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program on March 5. But Trump administration attorneys are seeking relief from the Supreme Court, which could announce as soon as Friday whether it will decide the matter.
Trump’s veto threat was the first of his presidency, a bold move against an effort that had been painstakingly crafted by a group of 16 senators — Republicans, Democrats and one independent — working for weeks behind closed doors to reach a consensus.
Trump said in a tweet shortly before the vote that passage would be a “total catastrophe,” in part because it did not include limits the White House wants on family visas and the diversity lottery.
The Senate voted 54 to 45 to advance the measure from Sens. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Angus King, I-Maine. But the bill failed to reach the 60 votes needed to break a GOP-led filibuster.
Three Democrats — Sen. Kamala Harris of California and the two senators from New Mexico, Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich — voted against the measure, mainly out of a concern that its border security provisions went too far. Eight Republicans — those who were part of the bipartisan accord — voted in favor.
The White House and Republican leaders put their muscle behind a rival measure from Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that would protect the Dreamers and provide border security funds, but also severely limit legal immigration in the future.
It also failed to advance, showing the limits of a Republican-only strategy. The Trumpbacked measure drew less support than the bipartisan measure, failing 39 to 60.
Senators from the bipartisan group, disappointed that the White House and GOP leaders tipped the scales against their proposal, vowed to try again after Congress returns from a recess next week.
Rounds acknowledged that Trump’s veto threat hurt his group’s effort but said the White House may be willing to start negotiating, now that its own bill failed to pass. “We’ve always said we only thought this would pass out of here if the White House would come on board. I think they’ve put themselves in a position to where they can start negotiating.”