Democrats Nix Idea Of Trading Dreamers' Protections For Border Wall, More Deportations

WASHINGTON ― Democrats on Capitol Hill said Tuesday they won’t allow President Donald Trump to use undocumented young people as leverage to get support from the lawmakers for building a border wall, locking up more immigrants and cutting legal immigration.

Multiple top White House officials are urging Trump to attempt such a deal with Congress, according to a McClatchy news story. White House chief of staff John Kelly backs the idea, as do Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner, according to the article.

It’s being presented as a potential compromise that could bring relief to some 800,000 so-called Dreamers who could lose their protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) in the courts or by Trump’s own hand. But Democratic leaders in both congressional chambers said it’s not a proposal they would accept.

“This is a nonstarter,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told HuffPost in a statement. Durbin is a lead advocate for legal status for young undocumented immigrants and a co-sponsor of the Dream Act to give them those protections, which the White House has said it would not back.

“The Dream Act is bipartisan” while the administration’s immigration policy wishlist “sharply divides” even the GOP, Durbin said. So agreeing to trade Dreamer protections for that wishlist is “no kind of deal,” he said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted that “Dreamers are not a bargaining chip for the border wall and inhumane deportation. Period.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) similarly tweeted that it was “reprehensible to treat children as bargaining chips,” and that “Dreamers are not negotiable.”

Asked whether the plan could gain traction in the Senate and whether it is being discussed, a senior Democratic aide who requested anonymity said simply, “no and no.”

A spokesman for Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who has pushed for comprehensive immigration reform and a bill to give legal status to Dreamers, said he would continue to do so ― but not through a proposal like the one being floated.

Menendez “will continue to fight to put these ‘model citizens’— as [White House chief of staff ] Kelly likes to refer to them ― on an earned path to citizenship by enshrining legal protections into law, but it must not come at the expense of making Americans pay for an offensive and ineffective wall, or by tearing families apart through a mass deportation agenda,” Menendez spokesman Juan Pachon told HuffPost in an email.

The prospective White House proposal would tie protection for Dreamers to a reduction in legal immigration; funding for Trump’s much-touted border wall and additional immigrant detention centers; and mandatory E-Verify for employers to check the legal status of potential hires, McClatchy reported.

Democrats have supported some of those items in the past, such as additional border fencing and an expansion of E-Verify in a failed 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill. But that bill also came with a path to citizenship for a broader set of undocumented immigrants, not solely Dreamers, and did not cut legal immigration.

Dreamers are in an especially perilous position under Trump, who promised to end the DACA program but has not yet done so. A group of state attorneys general threatened him with legal action if he does not rescind DACA by Sept. 5, and Trump administration officials won’t say whether they would defend the program should it go to court.

Given Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ long-stated position that DACA is unconstitutional, it’s possible he would let it go without a defense and kill it through the courts, if Trump doesn’t simply end the program himself.

The deal reportedly under consideration is being floated as a moderate option ― Kelly notably has said he thinks there should be something done through legislation to help Dreamers. Meanwhile, Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller, a former Sessions aide who opposes DACA, has not been allowed to brief Trump on the issue for months, according to the McClatchy report, suggesting his viewpoint could be sidelined.

But the idea of using Dreamers’ protection to make immigration enforcement gains isn’t a new one, or particularly moderate. And the reported proposal is more of an effort to implement restrictionist policies than a bid to help Dreamers, Todd Schulte, president of the pro-immigration reform advocacy group FWD.us, told HiffPost.

“It’s way outside the mainstream of what the country wants and bipartisan consensus,” he said. “This isn’t going anywhere. If people are interested in actually having policy solutions for Dreamers, that’s not what this is.”

Ignacia Rodriguez of the pro-reform National Immigration Law Center termed it “shameful ... to use people’s lives and basic need to feel secure in their homes as means for leveraging a political win.”

“But to do this in order to enact a white-nationalist blueprint is repulsive,” he added.

Dreamer advocacy groups, which have moved past pushing for protections for themselves without reprieve for their families and communities, also rejected the idea.

Lawmakers should “think of their own families before considering this latest ‘deal’ from Trump to use my brother’s welfare to put a hit out on my parents,” Cristina Jimenez, executive director of United We Dream, said in a statement.

“Would you cut a deal which would result in your own mother being chased down and locked into a detention camp to be tormented and abused?” she said. “The deal is morally wrong and must be rejected.”

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April 2015

At an event hosted by Texas Patriots PAC: “Everything’s coming across the border: the illegals, the cars, the whole thing. It’s like a big mess. Blah. It’s like vomit.”
At an event hosted by Texas Patriots PAC: “Everything’s coming across the border: the illegals, the cars, the whole thing. It’s like a big mess. Blah. It’s like vomit.”

June 2015

At a speech announcing his campaign: "When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

August 2015

On NBC's "Meet the Press": “We’re going to keep the families together, we have to keep the families together, but they have to go." 
On NBC's "Meet the Press": “We’re going to keep the families together, we have to keep the families together, but they have to go." 

September 2015

On CBS's "60 Minutes": “We’re rounding ‘em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice.”
On CBS's "60 Minutes": “We’re rounding ‘em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice.”

November 2015

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe": “You are going to have a deportation force, and you are going to do it humanely." 
On MSNBC's "Morning Joe": “You are going to have a deportation force, and you are going to do it humanely." 

February 2016

At a GOP primary debate: “We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out. They will come back ― some will come back, the best, through a process.”
At a GOP primary debate: “We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out. They will come back ― some will come back, the best, through a process.”

March 2016

At a press conference when asked if he would consider allowing undocumented immigrants to stay: "We either have a country or we don’t. We either have a country or we don’t. We have borders or we don’t have borders. And at this moment, the answer is absolutely not.”
At a press conference when asked if he would consider allowing undocumented immigrants to stay: "We either have a country or we don’t. We either have a country or we don’t. We have borders or we don’t have borders. And at this moment, the answer is absolutely not.”

April 2016

At an event hosted by NBC's "Today Show": “They’re going to go, and we’re going to create a path where we can get them into this country legally, OK? But it has to be done legally. ... They’re going to go, and then come back and come back legally.”
At an event hosted by NBC's "Today Show": “They’re going to go, and we’re going to create a path where we can get them into this country legally, OK? But it has to be done legally. ... They’re going to go, and then come back and come back legally.”

July 2016

At the Republican National Convention: "Tonight, I want every American whose demands for immigration security have been denied ― and every politician who has denied them ― to listen very closely to the words I am about to say. On January 21st of 2017, the day after I take the oath of office, Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced."

September 2016

At a rally: “Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise we don’t have a country.”
At a rally: “Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise we don’t have a country.”

September 2016

On "The Dr. Oz Show": “Well, under my plan the undocumented or, as you would say, illegal immigrant wouldn’t be in the country. They only come in the country legally.”
On "The Dr. Oz Show": “Well, under my plan the undocumented or, as you would say, illegal immigrant wouldn’t be in the country. They only come in the country legally.”

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.