Administration Hints That Trump Would Work With Dems on DACA

But since then, from the president on down, the administration has repeatedly undercut its own bargaining position to strike such a deal. Trump has repeatedly assured DACA recipients that he would take “no action” against them in 2017, and that he would “revisit this issue” if Congress failed to pass legislation protecting their legal status.

Now, White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short has put another nail in the coffin of “comprehensive immigration reform” by admitting the White House is not committed to holding out for concessions on border security before Congress reauthorizes DACA.

“We’re interested in getting border security and the president has made the commitment to the American people that a barrier is important to that security,” Short told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. “Whether or not that is part of a DACA equation, or … another legislative vehicle, I don’t want to bind us into a construct that would make the conclusion on DACA impossible.”

Short insisted that Trump was “not backing off a border wall” and “committed to sticking by the commitment that a physical structure is needed.” But by saying the White House would wait on these commitments to ensure the prompt reinstatement of DACA, Short assured congressional Democrats that their current plan of action—refusing all compromises and insisting on a standalone DACA vote—could not only stymie Republicans, but even win White House support.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been calling for such a stand-alone vote since last Wednesday, when he threatened to attach it to pieces of Senate legislation until it passed.

“I’m confident that if put on the floor, it will garner overwhelming support from both sides of the aisle,” Schumer said.

As a result, Republicans can only use the leverage gained from ending DACA if they make it clear to Democrats that there is no possibility of such a standalone vote—exactly the opposite of the position taken by Short on Tuesday.

This is not exactly what Trump’s immigration-minded supporters had in mind during election season. The Foundation for American Immigration Reform praised the president for ending DACA last week. But on Tuesday, FAIR spokesman Ira Mehlman told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that reauthorizing DACA only makes sense as an effort to win Democratic compromise on a larger enforcement package.

“Certainly there’s nothing wrong with the president having good relations with anybody in Congress, including the leadership of the Democratic party,” Mehlman said. “But it can’t be in the form of capitulation; there has to be some honest give-and-take here. And the president needs to remind them, as Barack Obama did, that elections have consequences, and he won. And he won in large measure on these issues.”

But a typical fumbled rollout has made this difficult, Mehlman said.

“This is obviously typical of the White House, and not just related to immigration: They need clear messaging. And that’s one of the things that they should have done right from the outset,” Mehlman said. “They needed to have some clear direction of what they wanted; there probably should have been some consultation with McConnell and Ryan, and also a strategy for making it clear to the American public that if Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi refuse to play ball, then they are jeopardizing the status of this subset of illegal aliens that they claim to care about. In the absence of that, the first thing you heard from Schumer and Pelosi and Dick Durbin was, we want a clean DREAM Act, and we’re prepared to give nothing in return.”

And if Democrats succeed in convincing the President to push DACA reauthorization by itself, that only makes passage of the president’s other immigration priorities that much harder.

“We’ve seen what happens when you give amnesty in exchange for future promises,” Mehlman said. “We’ve been down that road before.”