Trump casts cloud over negotiations on ‘Dreamers’
PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump said Sunday that a program that protects immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children is “probably dead,” casting a cloud over already tenuous negotiations just days before a deadline on a government funding deal that Democrats have tied to immigration.
At issue is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Barack Obama to shield hundreds of thousands of these individuals, known as “Dreamers,” from deportation. Trump, who has taken a hard stance against illegal immigration, announced last year that he will end the program unless Congress comes up with a solution by March.
“DACA is probably dead because the Democrats don’t really want it, they just want to talk and take desperately needed money away from our Military,” the president tweeted. “I, as President, want people coming into our Country who are going to help us become strong and great again, people coming in through a system based on MERIT. No more Lotteries! #AMERICA FIRST.”
At an event Sunday in San Francisco, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Trump was “completely wrong” about Democrats not wanting a DACA resolution.
“The fight for DACA is a values fight for us,” Pelosi said. “For him to say the Democrats don’t want it, he shouldn’t think that because we told him this was our top priority.
“The Senate has been working very hard and in a very positive way. I think that the president thought that might not happen and he would never have to make a decision, but now that he sees that that’s on a good path he is now walking away from what he said.”
Republicans and Democrats were already at odds over funding the government, and the negotiations became more complicated after Democrats — whose votes are needed to pass a government funding bill — insisted immigration be included. Without a deal, government funding expires midnight Friday.
Further roiling the talks are comments by Trump during an Oval Office meeting in which he questioned the need to admit more Haitians to the U.S., along with Africans from “shithole” countries, according to people briefed on the conversation. Responding to the outcry, Trump declared Sunday night: “I’m not a racist.”
The president last week rejected as insufficient an immigration deal drafted by the bipartisan group of lawmakers who attended that meeting. The deal had included a pathway to citizenship for the “Dreamers” that would take up to 12 years, as well as $1.6 billion for border security, including Trump’s promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Notably, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen also disputed Trump’s assertion that DACA was “probably dead.”
“I do not believe DACA is dead,” Nielsen said on “Fox News Sunday.” She said the bipartisan proposal rejected by Trump did not address core security issues and that Trump’s administration was not interested in “half measures.”
Chronicle staff writer Sarah Ravani contributed
to this report.