Action to protect so-called Dreamers from deportation has stalled indefinitely, with neither President Trump nor Democrats and Republicans in Congress feeling pressure to compromise as the midterm elections approach.
These nearly 2 million illegal immigrants, brought to the U.S. as children, remain at some risk of deportation despite the Supreme Court essentially nullifying Trump’s March 5 deadline to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program implemented by his predecessor.
But with the elections looming, all sides retreated to their partisan corners after legal action eliminating the hard Monday deadline to enact permanent protections for DACA participants and others eligible for the program drained any momentum that existed to negotiate a deal.
“A lot of the air is out of the balloon here in the Capitol and people don’t sense its urgency,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, said this week. “We don’t do things around here unless there’s a deadline.”
Crafting consensus immigration legislation has proven virtually impossible over the years under the best of political circumstances. With the midterm elections eights months off — and the practical conclusion of the legislative season just four months off, at best — chances for a DACA deal are increasingly remote.
Midterm elections, especially, are about maximizing turnout by activating the base: committed voters most likely to show up in nonpresidential elections. This year’s is shaping up as a backlash against Trump and threatens Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Neither side is inclined to jeopardize their re-election by taking an uncertain vote on hot-button immigration legislation, despite bipartisan support for providing legal status to approximately 1.8 million Dreamers, adults brought to the U.S. as children through no fault of their own.
“DACA is probably on ice for a long time, now,” said one congressional Republican who has been active in the DACA talks, requesting anonymity in order to speak candidly.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another integral player in the negotiations, who is close with Trump, sounded exasperated when asked Thursday to describe the state of the conversations and when a deal might be reached. “I have no idea,” he said, flatly.
Around 800,000 people were initially enrolled in DACA, a program created by former President Barack Obama through executive action after legislation to legalize Dreamers failed in Congress, in large part due to Republican opposition in the House. Trump ended the constitutionally questionable program last fall, but gave it a monthslong wind-down period that was supposed to conclude March 5.
Indeed, congressional Democrats spearheaded a partial government shutdown in late January to try and get the president to compromise with them on DACA legislation.
But then a federal court judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to continue accepting renewal applications from DACA participants indefinitely. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene; On Monday it declined, leaving the case to the lower courts for adjudication.
Trump has proposed legalizing all Dreamers, both DACA participants and those eligible, in exchange for billions in funding for a security wall along the southern border and other enforcement measures, as well as a change in U.S. immigration policy to end the priority given to relatives of citizens and legal residents, replacing it with a merit-based system.
The president also wanted to substantially reduce legal immigration as a part of that proposed DACA compromise. That particular demand didn’t sit well with many Republicans in Congress, although many in the GOP agreed with Trump. It was a unanimous nonstarter with Democrats, who blame the president for the breakdown of the talks.
“There is nothing more we could have done. We are prepared to do whatever’s necessary but we cannot pass a measure to correct the problem created by President Trump without President Trump,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said. “We don’t know what he wants.”
Trump and his Republican allies on this issue counter that it’s the Democrats who are blocking a deal, because of their fidelity to altering the immigration system that gives preference to family members. Republicans refer to this as “chain migration,” Democrats call it “family reunification.”
But some Republicans agree with Durbin that the problem lies with Trump and his habit of moving the goalposts. It’s not necessarily that he’s driving a hard bargain on DACA, Democratic and GOP sources told the Washington Examiner, it’s that his demands keep changing, making it impossible to strike an agreement.
“The ball is largely in the president’s court, but he goes back and forth,” said a Republican insider who opposes Trump’s hawkish immigration positions and has been active on the DACA issue.
“[Trump] said he would sign a Dreamer and border deal, he said he would sign what Congress [passed,] and he even said he’d take the heat if his own base was upset. But since then, he’s rejected five different bipartisan deals,” added Todd Schulte, a Democratic operative who leads the pro-immigration group, FWD.us.
The earliest the DACA case could end up back in the Supreme Court is this coming fall. A key question in the interim is whether the Department of Homeland Security would deport either Dreamers whose DACA status has lapsed or is in flux or those illegal immigrants eligible for DACA but who never signed up.
Democrats are concerned, and some Republicans warn that it could happen. Others believe that threat could spur a DACA deal, with Trump and the Congress motivated to avoid the bad political optics mass deportations of Dreamers so close to the midterm elections.
Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., aligned with Trump on DACA, downplayed fears about possible deportations and said he expects an agreement to be hammered out at some point.
“We still have the motivation, there’s still an uncertainty whether it’s this year or next year,” he said. “There are conversations that I’m involved in that are ongoing. We got very close.”
