Immigration advocates to meet with Pence on deal to protect Dreamers and end shutdown
The White House has invited several leading Hispanic groups to meet Thursday with Vice President Mike Pence and top adviser and President Donald Trump’s son-inlaw Jared Kushner to see if there is a way to trade funding for Trump’s proposed border wall in exchange for protections for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the country illegally by their parents.
Trump might also “pop in” to the meeting being organized with officials from the League of United Latin American Citizens, Libre Initiative, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and other immigrant-advocacy groups, said people familiar with the planning.
Domingo Garcia, president of LULAC, said his organization wants to help both sides find common ground to end the shutdown. Garcia said he plans to take a message that groups like his want a permanent solution for Dreamers and TPS holders. He wants those groups to have a path to citizenship.
Garcia and the organizations also want an aid package for Central America. In exchange, they’re open to a $3 billion to $6 billion border-security package that focuses on a “virtual barrier” but no wall.
TPS is a status granted to immigrants who can’t return to their home countries because of a natural disaster or significant emergency. Thousands of Haitians, Salvadorans, and Hondurans are in the U.S. with temporary protected status. On Saturday, Trump offered Democrats a three-year extension of protections for roughly 700,000 Dreamers and hundreds of thousands of more people with Temporary Protected Status in exchange for $5.7 billion in border-wall funding and other enforcement and humanitarian assistance.
Even before Trump started speaking, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leaders were calling the proposal “a non-starter” that was full of “previously rejected initiatives.”
Portions of the U.S. government have been shut down for 33 days because of the disagreement over wall funding, keeping 800,000 federal employees out of work and numerous services suspended.
The meeting reflects a break between Democrats and immigration advocates against Trump’s demands. Until now, immigration advocates have largely supported Speaker Pelosi and Senate Democrats in their opposition to Trump’s immigration policies. But Trump got their attention when he made an offer to protect roughly 1 million immigrants living in the U.S. under such special status.