Donald Trump and senior Democrats took their first steps toward a possible compromise deal on immigration and border security over the weekend, even as the president ramped up his feud with Speaker Nancy Pelosi with the government shutdown in its fifth week.
It’s not clear whether Trump’s olive branch will yield fruitful negotiations, given that Democrats want the government open first, want more than he’s currently offering, and don’t trust him. And it’s unclear how much Trump is willing to cut a deal as he tries to shift blame for the longest government shutdown in modern U.S. history.
With no formal negotiations happening, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans votes to advance the president’s latest proposal as early as Tuesday testing what so far has been a nearly united Democratic insistence on reopening the government ahead of negotiations on a border-security package.
Democrats have said they don’t want to reward Trump for what say is taking 800,000 federal workers hostage to get his border wall, lest they give him an incentive to use the shutdown tactic again. Even so, there were the first real signs of movement in weeks.
On Saturday, Trump offered three years of deportation relief for some immigrants as well as changes to asylum rules in return for $5.7 billion for border walls and assorted other upgrades. Democrats including Pelosi rejected the idea before Trump spoke.
A Bigger Deal?
But a day later, some Democrats started to float a broader immigration package, and Trump tweeted that he’d be prepared to offer a broader amnesty for a broader deal, defying some of his closest conservative allies. At the same time, Trump continued to taunt Pelosi on Twitter, calling her a “Radical Democrat” days after he scuttled her secret trip to visit troops in Afghanistan aboard a military jet after she suggested that he postpone the State of the Union address.
Trump said his latest proposal doesn’t include “amnesty,” but said he’s prepared to offer that for the right price.
“Amnesty will be used only on a much bigger deal, whether on immigration or something else,” he tweeted on Sunday, before adding a warning to Pelosi: “Likewise there will be no big push to remove the 11,000,000 plus people who are here illegally-but be careful Nancy!”
Democrats indicated on Sunday talk shows a willingness to fund border upgrades of some sort, but they want a permanent fix protecting Dreamers -- young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children -- and other migrants from deportation, not the three-year-reprieve offered by Trump.
‘Common Ground’
“We would love to have a permanent fix” for people eligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals as well as immigrants with Temporary Protected Status “just as he wants a permanent wall,” said Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat.