Trump insists wall funds be in DACA bill
He says deal also must end familial ‘chain migration’
President Donald Trump insisted that any deal that would grant legal status to illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children needs to include funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, driving home that message in a Thursday interview and in a Twitter post Friday morning.
“Look, I wouldn’t do a DACA plan without a wall,” Trump told The New York Times, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that he has set to expire next year. “We need it. We see the drugs pouring into the country, we need the wall.”
In his Friday tweet, he said a deferred-action program deal also needed to end “chain migration,” the policy that allows naturalized immigrants to petition for relatives to come to the United States. In the Times interview, Trump had mentioned the policy — ending it is a White House priority — but had not directly tied it to the deferred-action deal.
“The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration,” Trump wrote on Twitter from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
He added: “We must protect our Country at all cost!”
Democrats, whiplashed for months by the president’s changing stances on the deferred-action pro-
gram, reacted to the new positions by expressing interest in next week’s negotiations with Republican congressional leaders and the White House.
Congressional leaders of both parties are scheduled to meet with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Wednesday to discuss the spending bill, immigration and other matters. Kelly met with Democrats last week in Washington to discuss a path forward on a possible immigration bill.
“We’re not going to negotiate through the press, and look forward to a serious negotiation at Wednesday’s meeting when we come back,” Matt House, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer of New York, said in an email.
Trump has sought to build support for his more significant changes to the immigration system by pointing to recent terror attacks in New York City.
Akayed Ullah, 27, a greencard holder from Bangladesh accused of detonating a bomb in a New York subway tunnel this month, came to the U.S. in 2011 on a visa available to nieces and nephews of U.S. citizens. Sayfullo Saipov, a 29-year-old from Uzbekistan who’s alleged to have driven a pickup into people on a bike path in New York on Halloween, came to the U.S. in 2010 on a visa obtained through the lottery program.
“Both terrorists came to our country through the dysfunctional immigration system that we are correcting, rapidly,” Trump said earlier
this month during a speech at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.
Funding for a border wall has found little support in the Republican-controlled Congress. During the campaign, Trump repeatedly said Mexico would “pay for the wall.”
Since January, House Republicans have instead proposed paying for the wall upfront and moved legislation through the Homeland Security Committee that would devote $10 billion to wall construction.
In an earlier statement on the deferred-action program, the president said border wall funding and an end to chain migration needed to be discussed as part of any deal.
“Without these reforms, illegal immigration and chain migration, which severely and unfairly burden American workers and taxpayers, will continue without end,” Trump said in October.
Democrats remain resolutely opposed to wall funding, and many Republicans favor funding for “border security” that would not be earmarked for an actual wall. Polling this year has found low public support for the wall concept.
Information for this article was contributed by David Weigel and Ed O’Keefe of The Washington Post; by Justin Sink and Erik Wasson of Bloomberg News; and by staff members of The Associated Press.