Trump calls for bipartisan measure

Demand for cuts, border wall part of deal on ‘Dreamers’

WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump on Thursday called on Congress to deliver a bipartisan deal protecting younger undocumented immigrants from deportation, but he maintained his demand for a border wall and cuts to legal immigration that Democrats have opposed.

“I think it can be bipartisan,” Trump said at the White House ahead of a meeting with Republican senators on immigration. “I hope it can be bipartisan. It can take care of a lot of problems; it would be really nice to do it in a bipartisan way.”

Lawmakers are facing a March 5 deadline to pass legislation to help “Dreamers,” immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, after Trump announced in September he would terminate anObamaera programcalled Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals that has provided twoyear work permits to hundreds of thousands of them. Nearly 700,000 DACA recipients are enrolled in the program; after March 5, nearly 1,000 per day will lose their work permits unless Congress acts.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump would play host to a bipartisan group of Congress members next week to continue the negotiations. That gathering comes as a Jan. 19 deadline looms to enact a new spending bill to keep the government open. Democrats are pushing to complete a deal on DACA by then and add it to the spending legislation — an effort that, if it fails, could force a government shutdown.

“This must be done now,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday. He told reporters later thatDemocrats are continuing to push for “an agreement to enshrine DACA protections alongside additional border security” in the next spending agreement.

Republicans are resisting attempts to tie the two issues together.

“Our deadline is not two weeks from now. Our deadline wasn’t Christmas. Our deadline is by the first week of March,” said Sen. James Lankford, R- Okla., who attended the meeting with Trump on Thursday.

While Lankford and others would prefer to take a slower approach, other Republicans including Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, as well as dozens of moderate Republicans in the House insisted that the issue must be resolved quickly.

To earn his support for the GOP’s tax reform plan, Flake said hewas assured by Trump and SenateMajority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that a bill addressing the fate of DACA recipients would be given an up- ordown vote this month.