Santa Fe New Mexican

Trump, top Dems agree to work on deal to help Dreamers

- By Ed O’Keefe and David Nakamura

WASHINGTON — Democratic leaders announced late Wednesday that they agreed with President Trump to pursue a legislativ­e deal that would protect hundreds of thousands of young undocument­ed immigrants from deportatio­n and enact border security measures that don’t include building a physical wall.

The president discussed options during a dinner at the White House with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., that also included talks on tax reform, infrastruc­ture and trade. Trump has showed signs of shifting strategy to cross the aisle and work with Democrats in the wake of the high-profile failures by Republican­s to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

A possible alliance between Trump and the Democrats on immigratio­n would represent a major political gamble for a president who made promises of tougher border control policies the centerpiec­e of his campaign and pledged to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border. A majority of Republican­s, especially in the House, have long opposed offering legal status, and a path to citizenshi­p, to the nation’s more than 11 million undocument­ed immigrants.

But Trump has vacillated over the fate of the younger immigrants, known as Dreamers, who have lived in the country illegally since they were children. Under mounting pressure from the right, Trump moved two weeks ago to begin dismantlin­g Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama-era program that has allowed 690,000 Dreamers to work and go to school without fear of deportatio­n.

In announcing the decision, the president made clear that he expected Congress to pursue a plan to protect the DACA recipients, offering a six-month delay until their two-year work permits begin to expire in March.

In a statement, the White House described the meeting as “constructi­ve” and said the administra­tion “looks forward to continuing these conversati­ons with leadership on both sides of the aisle.”

Congressio­nal aides familiar with the exchange said that Trump and the party leaders agreed to move quickly on legislatio­n to protect Dreamers, though aides did not disclose whether they agreed that the goal should be for Dreamers to eventually be offered a path to citizenshi­p.

In a statement, Schumer and Pelosi said they had “a very productive meeting at the White House with the President. The discussion focused on DACA. We agreed to enshrine the protection­s of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that DACA and border security were discussed but she said excluding border wall funding from a package deal was “certainly not agree to.”

Earlier in the day, Trump held a bipartisan meeting with a group of House members. Afterward, several Democrats involved in those talks said the president also had made clear that he did not expect border wall funding to be included in a legislativ­e deal on the Dreamers.

“He said, the wall doesn’t have to be necessary,” Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, told reporters at the White House. “He said we’re going to add [wall funding] somewhere else. … We’ve told him we don’t want to tie this [together]. He said, ‘DACA, we’re going to do it early. We’re going to do some kind of border security.’ He brought up the wall. He said that doesn’t have to be on this DACA bill.”

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