President Trump is taking what his allies hope will be a temporary hit with televised images of children being detained at the border in pursuit of a deal that would expedite the removal of undocumented families and end the practice opponents call “catch and release.”
“If you don’t solve the two problems together, you are going to be looking at the next DACA population,” said a source close to the White House, referring to an Obama-era program terminated by Trump that shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants brought into the U.S. as minors. “The president is trying to get the full solution.”
Trump told two different audiences on Tuesday that he didn’t personally want to see children separated from their parents. “I don’t want children taken away from parents,” Trump said to the National Federation of Independent Business, blaming “crippling loopholes that cause family separation, which we don’t want.”
The president had a similar message for House Republicans, urging them to pass a bill that would correct the problem without compromising his promises of border security. “This is a dangerous issue. The images are bad for us. A sad situation and we have to something,” Trump was quoted as saying Tuesday night.
Trump’s messaging has been confusing. He signaled late last week that he might veto a compromise immigration bill the White House had been working on with House Republican leadership. The White House subsequently said Trump misunderstood the question. Trump’s talk Tuesday of unspecified “changes” he might make to the legislation set Washington aflutter again, but nothing along those lines came out of his meeting with GOP lawmakers.
At various points, the administration has vacillated between defending “zero tolerance” for illegal entries, blaming family separation on the Democrats and denying any major change from what previous administrations were doing. Trump squared the circle in his NFIB speech:
“We want to solve this problem. We want to solve family separation,” he said. “I don’t want children taken away from parents. And when you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away. Now, we don’t have to prosecute them. But then we’re not prosecuting them for coming in illegally. That’s not good.”
Translation: The protocols that require separate detention for adults and children were in place previously; part of what’s changed is that the Trump administration is holding people who in the past would have been released with a notice to appear; they would like a legislative solution that does not force that choice.
All this is familiar Trump legislative bargaining. On Obamacare, Trump endorsed diametrically opposed approaches to repealing (in varying degrees) and replacing (sometimes) his predecessor’s controversial healthcare law. He even suggested allowing Obamacare to collapse under its own weight. He also generally promised to sign whatever bill Republican congressional leaders thought could pass their respective chambers.
Trump performed a similar dance on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. He ordered DACA to be wound down by March 5, giving Congress a chance to pass legislation. He implied to members he would sign whatever they could pass. He also endorsed a specific immigration framework to which bills must adhere or otherwise they would be vetoed.
Another feature present in all three examples is Trump using an outcome that nobody wants to force Congress to negotiate — Obamacare collapsing with no viable replacement, DACA ending, and family separation.
“We want to end the border crisis by finally giving us the legal authorities and the resources to detain and remove illegal immigrant families all together and bring them back to their country,” Trump said Tuesday. “We have to bring them back to their country.”
The polling on family separation is brutal for Trump and Republicans, raising fresh fears about the midterm elections. But so were the numbers on DACA, and it was the Democrats — especially their senators hailing from red states — who ultimately caved on the government shutdown related to that issue.
Maybe the courts temporarily blocking an end to DACA, thus preventing deportations, helped the GOP avoid any backlash. Certainly, the polls on Obamacare led to inaction until the individual mandate was scrapped as part of the tax cut bill. So the ongoing family separation could be different — certainly lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, seem to think so.
Trump is taking the risk.
There is one other thing Obamacare repeal, DACA, and an immigration bill designed to end the border crisis have in common: So far none of them have passed. As it turns out, confusing messaging can sometimes make it harder to cobble together legislative majorities and dire scenarios don’t always produce the president’s desired result.
On the last issue especially, Democrats have accused Trump of hostage-taking. In this case, it is the weeping children who are the hostages.
Trump is undaunted, praising his homeland security secretary in a Tuesday night tweet.
Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen “did a fabulous job yesterday at the press conference explaining security at the border and for our country, while at the same time recommending changes to obsolete & nasty laws, which force family separation,” he tweeted. “We want ‘heart’ and security in America!”
