DACA supporters up against wall

WASHINGTON — Connecticut’s 8,000 or so DACA recipients have seen this movie before: The state’s Democratic delegation pushing with all its limited might to keep legal status for so-called Dreamers, only to run into President Donald Trump’s “wall” — both political and physical.

Trump has dug in on his demand that any consideration for youthful immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children be conditioned on building his promised wall across the 2,000-mile length of the U.S. border.

And now he is topping it off with a further demand for ending “chain migration” — the practice of admitting relatives of foreign-born U.S. citizens or green-card holders.

“Democrats are doing nothing for DACA — just interested in politics,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start ‘falling in love’ with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS.”

Connecticut Democrats dispute that. At the urging of DACA recipients in the state, both Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy voted against the budget extension deal last month because it did not include language granting a reprieve to the nation’s 800,000 or so Dreamers.

In September, Trump canceled President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals order, which set a deportation clock ticking.

On Wednesday, Senate and House leaders from both parties met with OMB Director Mick Mulvaney in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office in an effort to negotiate a compromise.

They are working against the next government-funding deadline Jan. 19, which could result in a government shutdown if a deal is not struck. Whether that deal will include a DACA reprieve is anyone’s guess.

Some in Connecticut remain hopeful that a deal can indeed be struck.

“If 2017 was the year of tax-cut success and Obamacare repeal-andreplace failure, 2018 should be the year of the deal,” said Jim Campbell, a Westport real estate executive, former chairman of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee and Trump supporter. “If it’s DACA in exchange for border security, that’s a logical deal.”

Part of the art in this deal, if there is one, may be to negotiate an agreement in which both sides emerge to claim victory. In this way, Trump could claim he got his wall — even if it is more a combination of new fencing and more drones, and not a Berlinstyle behemoth across thousands of miles.

Democrats, in turn, could say they won a DACA victory at a cost of more border security — but no wall.

“What we’re seeing here is Donald Trump growing into the role of dealmaker,” said Gary Rose, a political scientist at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. “I don’t want to say he’s reached the point of an LBJ (President Lyndon B. Johnson), but I think we’re going to see some horse trading if he can get some of what he wants.”

Trump’s appetite for bargaining may be diminished by the opposition of his base to anything that could be characterized as “amnesty.” In addition to building a wall, Trump campaigned on a promise to deport all who reside in the U.S. without legal status.

But Trump also is capable of tweeting total victory, even if the facts don’t exactly conform to the claim.

“Part of the great tradition of American legislating is negotiating compromise and claiming full victory,” said Campbell. “It’s a little cruder in this administration, but it’s what these politicians have been doing for a long time.”