Shutdown battle has complicated efforts to reach agreement on immigration

WASHINGTON— Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer on Tuesday pulled back an offer of $25 billion (U.S.) for U.S. President Donald Trump’s longpromised southern border wall, as lawmakers scrambled to figure out how to push a deal to protect 700,000 or more so-called Dreamer immigrants from deportation.

Schumer had made the offer last Friday in a last-ditch effort to head off a government shutdown. Then came scalding criticism from his party’s liberal activist base that Democrats had given up too easily in reopening the government without more concrete promises on immigration.

The shutdown battle complicated the already difficult search for an immigration pact: GOP hard-liners appeared emboldened, while Democrats absorbed withering criticism from progressives. Neither development seemed likely to push the combatants toward the compromises needed to produce a bill.