Trump threatens to veto bipartisan DACA plan
Senate measure is narrower than White House’s
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump pushed a 500-page immigration bill as the only option in Congress to help so-called Dreamers, all but issuing a veto threat on alternatives just as a bipartisan coalition of senators appeared close Wednesday to agreeing on a proposal that may draw broader support.
Top Republicans back the administration approach from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. That measure protects 1.8 million young immigrants from deportation in exchange for massive long-term cuts in legal immigration of family members of immigrants. It includes $25 billion for Trump’s border wall and a ramp-up of enforcement that would increase the pace of deportations.
But even as White House aides framed any alternatives as unworkable bills that Trump would not sign into law, a group of senators, the Common Sense Coalition, led by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, appeared on the verge of a breakthrough on a rival strategy.
Their proposal would take a more narrow approach favored by Democrats, linking protections for young immigrants and the $25 billion in border security. It would steer clear of the more complicated issues of family visas or legal migration limits that have drawn sharp opposition to the White House approach. But the bipartisan plan would prevent the parents of the young immigrants from earning legal status — a GOP priority.
However, the swift rejection by Trump — who once assured senators he would sign whatever immigration measure they sent him — threatened to squash the bipartisan effort.
“I am asking all senators, in both parties, to support the Grassley bill and to oppose any legislation that fails to fulfill these four pillars,” Trump said, referring to his multi-pronged approach, in statement ahead of the bipartisan group’s morning meeting. “That includes opposing any short-term ‘Band-Aid’ approach.” The pillars include young immigrants, border security, family visas and the diversity lottery.
Senators resisted Trump’s move to scare them off a bipartisan plan as they tried to amass the 60 votes needed from the narrowly-divided Senate ahead of voting expected on Thursday.
“Our group from the very beginning has been committed to coming up with a bipartisan plan on immigration, and that is what it appears we’ve been able to do,” Collins told reporters.
The group of about 25 senators has been meeting privately, including Wednesday morning.
Most proposals emerging in Congress, including the one from the White House, offer the young people a 10-year path to eventual citizenship — far beyond the protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
While many senators from both parties have come to agree that Congress should protect young immigrants, there is no such consensus around what to do about their parents, who brought the DACA recipients to the United States illegally as children. Those young immigrants have been protected against deportation from an Obamaera program that Trump is ending.
White House officials consider the pathway to citizenship to be a “dramatic concession” that is “very large and generous.” Their proposal, under Grassley’s bill, goes beyond the nearly 700,000 immigrants currently protected under DACA and extends to other young immigrants.
The bill is backed by top Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Congress is trying to develop a solution before Trump ends the DACA program March 5. That could leave young immigrants exposed to deportation, but court actions have temporarily kept the program in place.
Senators and many lawmakers in the House reject the White House proposal as too far-reaching. It had no Democratic support as debate in the Senate on immigration entered its third day and senators scrambled to find consensus.