Trump administration officials oppose a prospective deal in Congress that would trade three years of border wall funding for a three-year extension of protections for young, undocumented immigrants, a White House aide told the Washington Examiner Wednesday.
“The White House opposes a so-called three for three deal,” said Raj Shah, White House spokesman.
Shah was referring to reports that lawmakers have considered including the immigration trade-off in the omnibus spending bill Congress must pass this month. One such trade-off would involve extending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Trump attempted to shutter earlier this month, to secure three years of appropriations for construction of a wall along the southwest border.
Trump’s efforts to end DACA — which shields from deportation hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children — have hit a snag amid court challenges to the legality of concluding the Obama-era program.
Shah said the White House believes lawmakers should tuck funding for the border wall into the spending bill, which appropriators are rushing to complete before the March 23 deadline. He pointed to the budget caps deal members struck earlier this year as evidence that money for the wall should easily make its way into the spending bill.
“In fact, as a result of the caps deal, the routine appropriations process should yield wall funding in the omnibus. Securing the border is one of the most vital functions of government and is a core part of any routine funding bill,” Shah said. “Separately, we have never stopped working to negotiate an immigration reform package that addresses DACA, stops illegal immigration and secures and modernizes our legal immigration system.”
Conservative lawmakers are likely to resist any efforts to trade DACA protections solely for wall funding, an approach that would virtually eliminate Republicans’ leverage to pursue broader reforms to the immigration system. A House Freedom Caucus source told the Washington Examiner that members of the conservative voting bloc “would not go for” a DACA deal that yielded nothing but border wall funding.
That source said many Freedom Caucus members still preferred immigration legislation proposed by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. Goodlatte’s immigration bill would grant legal status to those eligible for DACA, while also reducing legal immigration and cracking down on so-called “sanctuary cities.”
The Washington Post reported earlier Wednesday that White House aides — including legislative director Marc Short and top policy adviser Stephen Miller — had engaged GOP lawmakers about the prospect of putting a DACA deal in the spending bill.
