Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill) has been on the front lines of Congress’s immigration debate for more than a decade, but after he left a meeting with President Donald Trump on the issue Tuesday, he said his “head is spinning.”
Trump’s bizarre and confusing DACA meeting with Congress, explained
Actual DACA deals won’t happen in televised meetings.
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Legislators convened in the White House to see if they could make any headway on a legislative fix for the now-sunsetting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — what many Democrats say is a prerequisite for averting a government shutdown on January 19. The meeting, by all accounts, was a doozy.
In the extended bipartisan meeting, which was televised and mostly open to the press, Trump appeared to agree to almost everything presented to him — even if it came from Democrats.
He said he would “like” to pass a “clean” DACA bill, that would restore protections for upwards of 700,000 undocumented immigrants against deportation, and would “take the heat” politically for comprehensive immigration reform. In the past, that’s meant policy with a path to citizenship — a stark break the views espoused by his immigration hardliner advisers and supporters.
“We are going to do DACA, and then we then we can start immediately on the Phase 2 which would be comprehensive immigration — I would like that,” Trump said. “I think a lot of people would like to do DACA first.”
At one point in the meeting, Trump seemed so amenable to Democratic demands that House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had to jump in and remind Trump of the Republican position on DACA: that any agreement needs to come with substantial border security.
Republican senators returned to the Capitol Building saying the conversation with Trump “narrowed” negotiations to four factors: the legal status of DACA recipients, border security, family-based immigration, and the visa lottery system.
But that doesn’t seem be any advancement from where negotiations were yesterday or last week. If Congress wants to pass a DACA deal by the end of January, they are going to have to start making the difficult decisions soon.
Trump isn’t one for making those difficult decisions — and Congress isn’t any closer to a deal.
Trump doesn’t appear to have a clear vision on immigration
For weeks, Republicans have been asking the White House for more clarity on what Trump’s vision for a DACA deal.
But clarity was hard to come by on Tuesday. Trump said that he supported both expansive immigration — telling Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), “If you want to take it that further step, I’ll take the heat. You are not that far away from comprehensive immigration reform”— and told Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that he’d like to see a clean DACA bill first, with comprehensive immigration reform later.
His definition of a “clean DACA bill” is a little difficult to parse.
“I think a clean DACA bill, to me, is a DACA bill, but we take care of the 800,000 people ... but I think, to me, a clean bill is a bill of DACA, we take care of them, and we also take care of security,” Trump said.
There are currently five different proposals to enshrine DACA into law, all of which could fit into Trump’s “DACA bill” specification — from the DREAM Act, which Democrats and some Republicans would like to see passed, to the more conservative Succeed Act, which extends the citizenship process and addresses family-based immigration. Depending on whom you talk to, border security could mean anything from funding drones and more boots on the ground to the 30-foot concrete border wall that Trump so famously coined on the campaign trail.
Durbin told reporters that Trump described the “wall” in many different ways during the meeting, leaving some in the room confused about what he was actually envisioning. Republicans seemed to come away with varying degrees of specifics.
“It’s not a 2000-mile physical wall,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) recounted of Trump’s explanation. “We’ve been begging him to say this kind of stuff before. It’s about 700 or 800 miles total. Some of that is a replacement. But more important, the wall is really a fence. That was really important, a wall system.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said “what was very clear today is border security is not a wall. That is an element of multiple elements that are going to be in there.”
Lankford went on to say:
The president today has backed off of any kind of description that he’s looking for a sea-to-shining-sea fence, or wall. He backed up and said, That is not what we’re trying to do. We’re going to do technology in some areas. That’s one of the things Democrats have pushed very hard on to say technology will lead, not wall in some areas. He consented to that today.
Asked if this meeting offered the clarity Republicans have been looking for Lankford said, “Oh no, there’s still room to go.”
Conservatives are probably not happy with whatever just happened
Perhaps the most critical moment of the meeting was when Feinstein asked Trump if he would sign on to a “clean DACA” bill now with the assurance of more comprehensive immigration reform to come. Trump, agreeable, seemingly acquiesced to the Democratic agenda:
TRUMP: I have no problem — I think that’s basically what Dick [Durbin] is saying. We’re going to come out with DACA. We will do DACA and then we can start immediately on Phase 2. which would be comprehensive.
FEINSTEIN: Would you be agreeable to that?
TRUMP: Yeah, I would like to do that. I think a lot of people would like to see that. But I think we have to do DACA first.
That’s not what Republicans have been calling for.
McCarthy jumped in. The president had seemingly forgotten everything the Republican Party had established in the negotiations thus far: DACA had to come with some border security:
“Mr. President, you need to be clear though. I think what Senator Feinstein’s asking here — when we talk about just DACA, we don’t want to be back here two years later,” McCarthy said. “You have to have security, as the secretary would tell you.”
“I think that’s what she’s saying,” Trump retorted.
Republicans in the room erupted in a chorus of “No! No! No!”
“No, I think she is saying something different,” McCarthy said. Trump quickly returned to his talking points: chain migration, a merit-based immigration system, and border security.
But Trump’s willingness to accept Democrats’ terms was not lost on those outside the room. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) who chairs the conservative Freedom Caucus immediately told reporters a two-step immigration deal, with a clean DACA bill and comprehensive reform later would be a non-starter.
Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) former top adviser was more candid:
The meeting seemed to make some pundits think something was happening.
Trump ended the meeting with a nod to the reporters in the room: “I hope we gave you enough material. This should cover you for about two weeks,” he said.
The punditry that followed was almost as confusing as the meeting itself. Despite having just witnessed an inconclusive and at times contradictory session of policy negotiations, many in the media were quick to praise Trump for televising the vast majority of the meeting.
CNN’s Dana Bash went so far to call Trump’s showing “the presidency that many people thought Donald Trump was capable of.” Fox News’s Martha MacCallum called the discussion thoughtful and “policy proficient.”
Those in Trump’s inner circle were quick to amplify the positive reviews.
The reaction was similar to the time Trump struck a debt ceiling deal with Democratic leaders in Congress, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY), last fall, except this time it seems little, if anything, was actually accomplished.
Actual legislating doesn’t happen in televised meetings
Lawmakers didn’t expect to come out this meeting with a “deal.”
For one, the meeting included almost every ideological slice of the Democratic and Republican parties, from immigration hardliners like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) to Congressional Hispanic Caucus leader Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM), who notably was not invited, but successfully showed up anyway. And it was mostly televised.
That’s not how agreements are reached in Congress.
Instead, Republicans came out of the White House with a unified message: The conversation with Trump “narrowed the scope” of the conversation to protections for DACA recipients, family-based immigration, border security, and the visa lottery system.
To be clear, that is not narrow at all. The takeaway here is actually much simpler: Looking to Trump isn’t going to get Republicans any closer to a deal on DACA. That’s a negotiation that has to happen among themselves.
As Vox’s Dara Lind explained, if Republicans want a deal, the path forward is pretty straightforward:
If they decide they want to get to yes on a DACA deal, the policy can fall into place pretty easily — thanks to the ongoing bipartisan Senate negotiations, and the fact that, frankly, it’s pretty easy to imagine a compromise both sides would be happy with.
Congressional leaders are expected to meet again Wednesday to talk more specifics. If Democrats are intent on getting this done by the government spending deadline — which Republicans continue to be reluctant to do — they need to start making some decisions.
Dylan Scott contributed reporting to this story.
