Arizona congressman blasts Trump’s immigration list for DACA protection

PHOENIX — A list of hard-line immigration reforms demanded by President Donald Trump in exchange for extending protection for Dreamers was not met well by an Arizona congressman.

“President Trump’s immigration ‘principles’ announced [Sunday] are nothing more than a wish list pushed by his most racist advisers, (U.S. Attorney General) Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego said in a statement.

Trump’s list of demands included overhauling the country’s green-card system, a crackdown on unaccompanied minors entering the country, and building his promised wall along the southern border.

Many were policies Democrats have said explicitly were off the table and threaten to derail ongoing negotiations over legislation protecting young immigrants known as Dreamers.

They had been given a reprieve from deportation and the ability to work legally in the country under President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which Trump ended last month but does not expire until March.

Gallego accused the White House of trying to slip the demands past Americans.

“It’s no wonder the administration released this shameful plan late on a Sunday evening, when most Americans have turned off the news and are spending time with their families,” he said.

Trump announced that would give Congress six months to come up with a legislative fix before recipients began to lose their status.

Trump suggested at the time that he was eager for a deal, telling reporters, “I have a love for these people and hopefully now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly.”

Gallego said it was time for Republican leaders in Congress to step up.

“The real question now is when will Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell stop catering to the whims and demands of the far-right and allow a vote on the Dream Act,” he said.

Trump had previously said he wanted a DACA deal to include significant money for border security and eventual funding for his border wall. But the priorities released by the White House went far beyond that.

They included a complete overhaul of the green-card system that would limit family-based green cards to spouses and the minor children of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents as part of an effort to end “chain migration.”

The White House also said it wants to boost fees at border crossings, hire 10,000 more immigration enforcement officers, make it easier to deport gang members and unaccompanied children and overhaul the asylum system. And it wanted new measures to crack down on “sanctuary cities,” which don’t share information with federal immigration authorities, among other proposals.

“These priorities are essential to mitigate the legal and economic consequences of any grants or status to DACA recipients,” White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told reporters in a Sunday evening conference call.

“We’re asking that these reforms be included in any legislation concerning the status of DACA recipients.”

But it remained unclear whether the president considered each of the more than a dozen priorities to be non-negotiable or whether the White House saw them more as a starting point for negotiation with members of Congress. Officials on the call notably declined to say whether the president would veto legislation that did not include each and every one of them.

Trump last month appeared to reach at least the broad outlines of a DACA deal with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer in which he would agree to extend DACA protections in exchange for a package of border security measures.

While Trump made clear that he was not backing down on his wall demand, he and other administration officials said then that they would be comfortable with wall funding coming later, in a separate legislative vehicle.

In a joint statement Sunday night, Pelosi and Schumer said Trump’s list of proposals failed “to represent any attempt at compromise.”

“…The administration can’t be serious about compromise or helping the Dreamers if they begin with a list that is anathema to the Dreamers, to the immigrant community and to the vast majority of Americans” they wrote.

“The list includes the wall, which was explicitly ruled out of the negotiations. If the president was serious about protecting the Dreamers, his staff has not made a good faith effort to do so.”

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) introduced a bill last week that would provide $1.6 billion in funding for border fortification and would give conditional resident status to DACA recipients and other children.

The other undocumented children have to have been living in the United States “continuously since 2012.”

“If we can protect these DACA recipients and provide solutions to better secure our borders at the same time, that’s a win-win,” he said on the Senate floor.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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