Trump: Fix immigration, or ‘let’s have a shutdown’
WASHINGTON – President Trump said Tuesday that he would shut down the government if Congress doesn’t fix an immigration system that doesn’t allow the government to deport criminal gang members.
“If we don’t change it, let’s have a shutdown. It’s worth it for our country. I’d love to see a shutdown if we don’t get this taken care of,” Trump said as he met with law enforcement officials to discuss the threat of the MS-13 gang.
If Democrats don’t want to close loopholes that allow gang members to illegally enter and remain in the country, he said, “then shut it down.”
Trump’s comments came just four days before Congress faces another deadline to pass a spending bill or shut down the government. The last spending impasse was resolved only after Democrats extracted a promise that Trump and Republicans would negotiate a solution to immigrants who arrived in the United States as children.
The previous shutdown lasted three days before Congress passed a threeweek spending extension.
Trump claimed victory in that battle, portraying Senate Democrats as the instigators of the shutdown. But his remarks Tuesday could flip that script.
“The only people who have caused a shutdown are the Democrats who have repeatedly held the government hostage over their own demands,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said. “It’s a fight we won last time, and it’s one we feel very confident we will win again.”
But she suggested Trump wasn’t threatening to veto a spending bill if he didn’t have an immigration deal by Friday.
“They’re not mutually exclusive. The president wants to get a deal on both of those,” she said. “We don’t want to hold the government hostage over this issue.”
On Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said Trump’s threat “speaks for itself.”
“We had one Trump shutdown,” he said. “Nobody wants another, maybe except him.”
One participant in the MS-13 meeting, Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y., also distanced himself from the shutdown talk.
“I don’t see the need for a shutdown now,” he said. “I don’t see that at all in the offing.”
Trump is insisting that any immigration bill have a permanent legal status for “DREAMers” who entered the country illegally as children; $25 billion in border security, including a border wall; restrictions on family-based chain migration; and an end to the diversity visa lottery system that gives preferences to underrepresented countries.
But it’s unclear whether that framework will make it into legislation by the self-imposed spending deadline Friday.
Another deadline comes on March 5, when DACA recipients who have not applied for a temporary extension to their status could face deportation.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday that he doubts Trump would extend that deadline. And he noted that only 690,000 of the 1.8 million eligible DREAMers have applied for that status.
“The difference between (690,000) and 1.8 million were the people that some would say were too afraid to sign up, others would say were too lazy to get off their asses, but they didn’t sign up,” Kelly said.