Trump offers ‘Dreamers’ deal to end shutdown

UPDATE: President Donald Trump on Sunday called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., irrational after she rejected his immigration proposal that, if accepted, could have ended the monthlong partial government shutdown. Democrats “turned down my offer yesterday before I even got up to speak. They don’t see crime & drugs, they only see 2020,” the president tweeted. Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats on Sunday said they would not consider an immigration compromise until Trump reopened the government, which would require Congress to pass a budget deal first. Schumer accused Trump of “hostage taking” for offering to protect from deportation certain groups of immigrants, including those brought to the United States illegally as children, in exchange for funding to build a wall at the U.S. southern border.

In response to criticism from some conservatives, the president clarified Sunday that the offer he made did not include amnesty for illegal immigrants. “Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else,” Trump said. “Likewise there will be no big push to remove the 11,000,000 plus people who are here illegally.”

OUR EARLIER REPORT (1/19/19, 5:25 p.m.): President Donald Trump on Saturday offered Democrats a deal to protect young illegal immigrants in exchange for funding a border wall and ending the partial government shutdown. Speaking from the White House, Trump said he was “here today to break the logjam and provide Congress with a path forward,” but Democratic leaders quickly dismissed his proposal as a “non-starter.” In advance of the president’s remarks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the expected plan “a compilation of several previously rejected initiatives, each of which is unacceptable.”

Trump said the deal had support from rank-and-file Democrats and that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would bring up the proposal for a vote this week. In exchange for $5.7 billion for border security, the president said he would extend protections for so-called “Dreamers”—young people brought to the country illegally as children—as well as those with temporary protected status after fleeing countries affected by natural disasters or violence.

Administration officials said the protections would apply only to those illegal immigrants in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and he would extend temporary protected status only for those who currently have it and have been in the United States since 2011. That means people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti who had their status revoked since Trump took office would get a reprieve. Trump also clarified that the border wall he wants would not be a concrete structure “from sea to shining sea,” but rather “steel barriers in high-priority locations.”