Trump says he’d sign ‘bill of love’ on immigration

Funding for border wall remains a sticking point

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump promised Tuesday to sign what he called a “bill of love” to extend protections to 800,000 immigrants who entered the United States illegally as children — if Congress can work out the details.

“You folks are going to have to come up with a solution. And if you do, I will sign that solution,” Trump told 25 lawmakers in a remarkable televised negotiation at the White House.

But funding for a wall along the border with Mexico remains a sticking point, as Trump insisted that border security remain a part of any deal.

Lawmakers are under a March 5 deadline — imposed by Trump — to come up with a legal fix to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA, as it’s known, is now the main stumbling block holding up a wide range of other Trump administration immigration priorities.

A major spending bill, for instance, includes $18 billion for a wall along the border with Mexico. And that gives the immigration talks an even more urgent deadline, as current spending authority expires Jan. 19.

So Trump and his top advisers sat down Tuesday with 25 members of Congress — 16 senators and nine representatives, 15 Republicans and 10 Democrats.

The Republicans came united with a common talking point: Congress needs a permanent fix to immigration enforcement to avoid having to deal with the issue again. Democrats said the urgency of saving DREAMers from deportation meant that extending DACA must take priority.

The so-called DREAMers are the children of immigrants who remained in the country illegally, growing up as Americans but without the legal status. President Barack Obama’s solution was to use his enforcement discretion to give up to 800,000 DREAMers a quasi-legal status, but the Trump administration has said Obama exceeded his authority and that any fix must come from Congress.

Trump said repeatedly Tuesday that he would sign any bill Congress sends him to make that deferred action program legal. But then he later clarified that such a bill must include border security measures, including funding for a border wall.

“A clean DACA bill to me is to take care of the 800,000 people,” he said. “We take care of that, and we also take care of security. And then we can go to comprehensive (immigration reform) later on.”

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, expressed optimism for a deal.

“We feel that we can put together a combination of the future of DACA as well as border security,” said Durbin, sitting to Trump’s right. “We want a safe border in America, period, when it comes to issues of illegal immigration but also drugs.”

But Republicans also want two other issues on the table: elimination of the diversity visa lottery program and family-based “chain migration.”

“Yes, we’ve got to do DACA, and I agree with you 100 percent,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “But if we don’t do security and we don’t do chain migration, we’re fooling each other that we’ve solved the problem.”