BENNET, GARDNER LIKELY TO DISCUSS IMMIGRATION

Colorado senators will attend a meeting about immigration at the White House on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON» U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner of Colorado are both likely to attend a meeting Tuesday at the White House to discuss immigration, but — even with their bipartisan participation — expectations are low that the conference will lead to a breakthrough in negotiations.

Bennet, a Democrat, and Gardner, a Republican, each have said they want to prevent the deportation of young immigrants who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children, and the two Colorado lawmakers have spent the past several weeks trying to devise a legislative fix with a handful of other senators.

Trump, however, wants to bind together any protection for young immigrants with new security measures, including billions of dollars for a wall on the Mexican border that was the centerpiece of his 2016 presidential campaign.

Bennet, Gardner and other lawmakers already were working on a package that would combine the two issues, but Trump’s latest counterproposal has infuriated some Democrats, who say his demands, such as $18 billion for a border wall system, go too far.

“It’s up to the White House to figure out how to solve the political problem they’ve created,” Bennet said in a statement. “Virtually no one other than the president thinks it’s a good idea to waste money on an ineffective ‘wall.’ ”

The stakes in the fight are big — starting with the fate of about 690,000 immigrants, including an estimated 15,500 in Colorado, who moved illegally to the U.S. as children.

These immigrants were shielded from deportation by former President Barack Obama in 2012, but Trump announced in September that he would end the policy, known officially as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA.

Trump gave Congress a deadline of March to come up with a replacement, but pro-immigration activists said lawmakers must act sooner to avoid problems for those in the program.

“It is estimated that 122 DACA recipients (nationwide) are losing their DACA status every single day since the announcement was first made,” wrote Carla Castedo, the Colorado state director of Mi Familia Vota, in a statement.

Adding to the tension is the threat of a government shutdown.

The federal government is funded only through Jan. 19, and some Democrats have threatened to nix any spending bill if there’s no agreement on young immigrants.

“As the Democrats see it, it’s take it or leave it. It’s their way or the highway,” said U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, in a floor speech on Monday.

Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting at the White House, a Gardner spokesman said the senator was open-minded about how to resolve the DACA standoff, so long as it addressed both young immigrants and border security.

“Both of these priorities are needed right now and Senator Gardner would support any legislative pathway for a sensible bipartisan solution,” spokesman Casey Contres said in a statement.

Asked about Trump’s counteroffer on security and the wall, Contres said “it’s something he’s going to need to look at closely and hear more from the administration on.”

Bennet aides said the Colorado Democrat likely would join Trump officials and other lawmakers at the White House — though it wasn’t 100 percent certain — and that he planned to meet Monday night with other Democrats to hash out a strategy.

Even if there is an immigration deal, the proposal still must pass both chambers of Congress — no easy feat given how heated the issue has become.

On the House side, two Colorado lawmakers have firsthand knowledge of that challenge.

U.S. Reps. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, and Jared Polis, D-Boulder, are both part of a moderate House caucus called the Problem Solvers, and the two Coloradans recently led efforts within that group to draw up a legislative fix.

Though their small team within the Problem Solvers caucus was able to reach consensus on a plan, Coffman said they were unable to get enough support from other members to move it forward.

“It’s not over, but it was a setback,” Coffman said.

Their proposal would have given young immigrants a pathway to permanent residency and then citizenship, he said, and also bolstered security along the border.

That included a “big plusup in border agents” but with the stipulation that the reinforcements would have to stay near the border and not be used for “internal security,” Coffman said.

As for a wall, their idea would have made allowances for some kind of barrier, but it wasn’t prescriptive.

“The harder part (of negotiations) was the border security,” Coffman said.