WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday denied an assertion by the Democratic leaders in Congress that they had an agreement to preserve protections for young immigrants living illegally in America and to bolster U.S.-Mexico border security, but without his coveted wall for now.
“No deal was made last night on DACA,” Trump said in an early morning tweet about the program put in place under the Obama administration program.
“Massive border security would have to be agreed to in exchange for consent. Would be subject to vote,” Trump said in a series of tweets about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals initiative.
Trump contradicted the characterization of a private White House dinner on Wednesday night by his guests, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the top Democrats on Capitol Hill.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also pushed back against the Schumer-Pelosi statement embracing the claim of a deal, saying, “While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to.”
It was a head-snapping turn of events for a president inclined recently to turn to Democrats to jump-start legislative imperatives. Only days ago, Trump and the Democratic leaders agreed to back a three-month extension of the debt limit in order to speed hurricane assistance.
“The WALL, which is already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls, will continue to be built,” Trump tweeted.
At the same time, he expressed sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of younger immigrants vulnerable to deportation even though they were brought to the United States as toddlers or children. He had announced last week that his administration was rescinding the program and gave Congress six months to come up with a legislative fix.
“Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military, really?” Trump wrote. “They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own – brought in by parents at a young age. Plus BIG border security.”
In their statement, Schumer and Pelosi said: “We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides.”
Separately, Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill had said after the White House dinner “the president was clear he would press for the wall but separate from this agreement.”
Either way, it was the second time in two weeks that Trump cut out Republicans to reach a deal with Pelosi and Schumer. A person briefed on the meeting, who spoke on condition anonymity about the private get-together, said the deal specifies bipartisan legislation that would provide eventual citizenship for the young immigrants.
House Republicans would normally rebel over such an approach, which many view as amnesty for lawbreakers. It remains to be seen how conservatives’ loyalty to Trump would affect their response to a policy they would have opposed under other circumstances.
The House’s foremost immigration hard-liner, GOP Rep. Steve King of Iowa, made clear that he was not happy.
Addressing Trump over Twitter, King wrote that if the reports were true, “Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible.”
Earlier Wednesday, during a White House meeting with moderate House members from both parties, Trump had urged lawmakers to come up with a bipartisan solution.
“We want to see if we can do something in a bipartisan fashion so that we can solve the DACA problem and other immigration problems,” he said.
The president said he would be open to separating the wall issue from the question of the younger immigrants, as long as the wall got dealt with eventually.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, in an Associated Press interview Wednesday, said “kicking these 800,000 kids out to countries that they’ve probably not been to since they were toddlers, in countries that speak languages they may not even know, is not in our nation’s interest.”
Added Ryan, R-Wis.: “So I do believe that there’s got to be a solution to this problem.”
Trump, deeply disappointed by Republicans’ failure to make good on years of promises to repeal the Obama-era health law, infuriated many in his party last week when he reached a three-month deal with Schumer and Pelosi to raise the debt ceiling, keep the government running and speed relief to states affected by recent hurricanes.
“More and more we’re trying to work things out together,” Trump said Wednesday, calling the development a “positive thing” for both parties.
“If you look at some of the greatest legislation ever passed, it was done on a bipartisan manner. And so that’s what we’re going to give a shot,” he said.
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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