President says he’s open to letting Dreamers ‘morph into’ citizenship

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he’s open to an immigration plan that will provide a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought to the country as children and are now here illegally.

“We’re going to morph into it,” Trump told reporters. “It’s going to happen, at some point in the future, over a period of 10 to 12 years.”

But immediately after Trump spoke, a senior White House official cast doubt on Trump’s assurances, saying a pathway to citizenship for so-called Dreamers was “maybe” an option.

“That’s a discussion point,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the issue publicly. The official added that Dreamers could immediately be given “legal status, as long as they behave themselves.”

Trump’s pronouncements — and the senior official’s addendum — came as the White House announced it would be unveiling a legislative framework on immigration next week that it hopes can pass both the House and the Senate. The president’s remarks amounted to a preview of that framework. He said he’ll propose $25 billion for building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and $5 billion for other security measures.

Trump told reporters he had a message for the Dreamers: “Tell ’em not to be concerned, OK? Tell ’em not to worry. We’re going to solve the problem.”

But Trump has said repeatedly that any deal to protect those immigrants from deportation is contingent on money for the border wall and other security measures.

Trump was talking about the young immigrants who had been protected from deportation and given the right to work legally in the country under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump announced he was ending DACA last year, but he has given Congress until March to come up with a legislative fix.

Trump said he was confident that a deal can be reached on the issue. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the framework to be unveiled Monday “represents a compromise that members of both parties can support.”

The senior official added that the White House planned to notify Congress on Wednesday night “exactly what the president’s position is. Cause that’s what they’ve been asking for. Cause they haven’t been able to come up with their own workable positions.”

Around three dozen senators from both parties met privately Wednesday, and two top lawmakers said they’d try crafting a compromise bill based on colleagues’ suggestions. The goal is to produce consensus legislation that would be the starting point for Senate debate on immigration, which is expected to begin Feb. 8, said Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., their parties’ No. 2 leaders.

“We’re the Senate, we have our own responsibility under the Constitution and we decided in this room to move forward,” Durbin said afterward. “If the president has some ideas he’d like to share, of course we’ll take a look at them.”