Trump calls for a ‘permanent deal’ for ‘Dreamers,’ along with ‘good border security’

CongressImmigrationWhite House
Sept. 6, 2017, 1:31 p.m. Reporting from Washington

Trump calls for a ‘permanent deal’ for ‘Dreamers,’ along with ‘good border security’

Brian Bennett

President Trump on Wednesday expressed willingness to work with congressional Democrats for a “permanent deal” to protect from deportation people brought to the country illegally as children.

That threat to the so-called Dreamers now looms because Trump on Tuesday ordered a phase-out of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program that President Obama created in 2012.

Given widespread public sympathy for the beneficiaries, Trump has seemed eager to find a remedy despite his campaign promise to shut the program down.

“I’d like to see something where we have good border security, and we have a great DACA transaction where everybody is happy,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One before his departure for Bismarck, N.D., where he delivered remarks about tax reform.

Passing a law to give Dreamers permanent legal status came up during an Oval Office meeting of Trump and congressional leaders earlier Wednesday.

At that session, Trump also sided with the Democratic leaders -- Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi -- on a stopgap budget deal that upset Republicans but, if passed, would avert at least until mid-December any government shutdown or debt crisis.

Trump, alluding to legal protection for Dreamers, spoke amicably of the Democratic leaders, telling reporters, “Chuck and Nancy would like to see something happen, and so do I.”

“And I said if we can get something to happen, we’re going to sign it and we’re going to make a lot of happy people,” he added.

A law to both protect Dreamers from deportation, allowing them to work and go to school lawfully, and to provide more money for border security would be narrower than the comprehensive plan to reduce legal immigration that administration officials spoke of on Tuesday.

Republicans have condemned Obama’s order creating DACA as an abuse of executive power. Trump’s order to phase it out gives Congress six months, until March 5, 2018, to write a law for an alternative program. Beneficiaries whose two-year permits expire after that date would not be able to renew them, making them liable for deportation to the countries where they were born if Congress doesn’t act.

Trump also attempted to explain what he meant when he wrote in a tweet late Tuesday, hours after announcing he would cancel DACA, that he would “revisit” the issue if Congress failed to act in six months.

“I want to see what happens in Congress. I have a feeling that’s not going to be necessary,” Trump said.

A headline on Breitbart News on Tuesday night called Trump’s tweet about revisiting DACA a “rare negotiating blunder.”

Not often has the president been criticized by that media organization, which is run by Trump’s former strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who was pushed out of the White House last month.