Story highlights
Donald Trump hosted the more conservative members of his party
Thom Tillis said negotiations had begun to focus on what Trump's priorities were
Key Republican senators met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday amid negotiations to reach a compromise on border security issues and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
While no breakthrough was reached, lawmakers in attendance said they thought the meeting made progress and that the President intends to have a bipartisan follow-up meeting next week, though invites would still need to go out for that.
Trump hosted the more conservative members of his party negotiating with Democrats in the Senate over DACA, an Obama administration policy that protected young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children from deportation.
At the start of the meeting, Trump said he hopes “everything is going to work out very well,” but touted the border wall he has long promised along with his desire to cut “chain migration,” or family-based migration, and the diversity visa lottery.
“I can tell you the Republicans want to see it work out very well,” Trump said. “If we have support from the Democrats, I think DACA’s going to be terrific. … We need the wall, we need all of those things, and frankly, I think a lot of Democrats agree with us when they see what’s happening, when they see the kind of problems we’re having at the border, they really understand it. Whether they’ll vote that way is another situation, but they really understand it.”
Since Trump opted to terminate DACA in September, Democrats and many Republicans have pushed to make the program, which benefits young immigrants who in most cases know no other country, a permanent legislative policy – but Trump and most Republicans have also demanded border security and increased immigration enforcement as part of a deal.
On Thursday, Trump hosted Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, a border hawk; Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, who is a staunch supporter of tough immigration enforcement policies; South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has co-sponsored a bill that would protect DACA eligible immigrants with Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin; Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, who has sponsored a bill that would overhaul and cut legal immigration; and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, who have sought a compromise that conservatives and Democrats could live with.
During the meeting, Graham told the room that while previous presidents had tried and failed to pass immigration reform, he’s hopeful Trump could be different.
“Obama couldn’t do it, Bush couldn’t do it, I think you can do it,” the South Carolina Republican told the President, in front of reporters before they were escorted out of the room. “There’s a bill to be had, if you want it bad enough, we’ll get it. It’ll be good for the country, everybody’s gotta give a little bit, but I’ve never been more optimistic about an immigration reform proposal making it to the President’s desk than I am right now.
Not present for Thursday’s meeting were Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Cory Gardner of Colorado, who have been meeting regularly with Graham, Durbin, Tillis and Lankford to reach a compromise. Gardner said he wasn’t invited to that meeting but was included in a different confab later in the afternoon, joking the White House may be trying to limit senators to one meeting a day.
Flake told reporters on the Hill Thursday that he wanted a bipartisan meeting to address the issue. No Democratic senators were at the Thursday meeting, but Flake said he would attend a bipartisan meeting next week.
“I was invited,” Flake said. “We have until the end of the month to get legislation, we’ve been promised a vote on the Senate floor. It does no good to just have a partisan bill. The only thing that’s going to work is a bipartisan bill. It’s got to have 60 votes.”
Cornyn spoke of progress after the meeting, and said he hopes lawmakers can “resolve our differences” to reach something Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could bring to the floor by the end of the month as he pledged to Flake.
“I think we’re narrowing the differences and I hope this meeting next week at the White House – this bipartisan meeting that he said he wanted to have – will produce some good results,” Cornyn told reporters on the Hill later.
Democrats are pushing for DACA to be resolved before they will for any government spending package. Funding runs out January 19, and a long-term budget deal will require Democratic votes to pass.
Trump set a March 5 target date for the two-year DACA permits to begin expiring, but more than 20,000 recipients will lose their protections before then because they either opted to or could not renew in a brief window allotted in September.
CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
