Hit a wall...

Immigration talks quickly hit a wall

Senators can barely agree on the terms of negotiation, let alone what a Dreamers deal would look like.

By SEUNG MIN KIM and BURGESS EVERETT

Senators crashing on a two-week deadline to come up with an immigration plan are already sparring over funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall, what qualifies as border security — even what the scope of the negotiations are.

It was an inauspicious start Tuesday to the bipartisan effort to break the months-long impasse over Dreamers and the budget that crescendoed with last weekend’s government shutdown. That crisis ended quickly, but Congress could be back in almost the same spot in two weeks absent a deal that can get 60 votes.

The path to 60, though, looks rocky indeed.

Though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to take up an immigration bill, what it would look like is anyone’s guess. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) revealed Tuesday he yanked his massive earlier offer of $25 billion in wall funding — a move that angered top Republicans and potentially undercut negotiations among a slew of senators trying to craft an immigration plan that can pass.

An initial gang of six senators has casually doubled, but some members aren’t deeply versed in immigration policy. The group’s leaders say their plan is by far the most developed proposal that can attract Democrats and Republicans, but conservatives with Trump’s ear say the administration has no interest negotiating off their bill.

The goal is seemingly straightforward: enshrining the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects from deportation young immigrants brought to the country as children, but which Trump decided to end. But the negotiations are anything but simple.

“It won’t be easy,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 GOP leader. “If it’s DACA for border security, that’s probably a deal that will get done. If we start adding other elements of the whole immigration debate into it?”

Thune answered his own question: “Narrower gets it done.”

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime advocate of young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, acknowledged: “We’re still caught up in this conversation of border security and what is acceptable and what isn’t.”

Indeed, senators are still largely talking more in terms of process than substance. Just over a dozen senators, led primarily by Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), on Monday began charting out how the group could begin to reach a Dreamers accord.

The list included senators who had already struck the bipartisan immigration deal vehemently opposed by the White House: Durbin and Graham, as well as Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). Among others who attended were Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

The guest list was confirmed by two people familiar with it.

Graham is trying to persuade Durbin and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), the respective party whips, to effectively serve as clearinghouses for immigration ideas from both sides.

“I’m trying to create a process where all this bipartisanship has someplace to go,” Graham said. “So if Cornyn and Durbin can work together and receive input, they can give us some idea of whether we can get a deal or what a base bill would look like.”

Senators are facing a tight deadline. Government funding expires again after Feb. 8, and McConnell has pledged to bring a bill to the floor so as long as the government stays open. Senior Democrats didn’t signal much appetite on Tuesday for another shutdown.

Trump has set March 5 as the official date by which DACA permits will begin expiring en masse, though a court decision this month that partially revived the program effectively pushes back that date indefinitely.

Still, Republicans know that, politically, they need to act on immigration before March — a point they repeatedly stressed to skeptical Democrats during the bipartisan meetings convened during the three-day shutdown.

“We were able to get some assurances to them that we really were going to move to DACA,” Rounds said. “We were able to explain to them, it’s in our own best interest to get beyond the March 5 issue without having problems because politically, we can’t allow DACA not to be addressed.”

But beyond agreeing on the need to act, there's little consensus on what to do.

Republicans believed Schumer’s offer for billions more in wall funding could have lured more conservative votes to back a broader deal. So when Schumer said Tuesday that he had retracted his offer made to Trump over a cheeseburger summit at the White House, senior Republicans characterized it as a major step backward.

Cornyn said Schumer offered $25 billion for the barrier. That was more than the $18 billion over a decade that the White House had floated earlier this month, and which Democrats panned. A spokesman for the New York Democrat declined to confirm the figure, but Democrats said Schumer was right to withdraw it because it was part of a broader negotiation that ultimately collapsed.

“It’s a substantial number and it’s probably in the realm of realistic in terms of what border security improvements are gonna cost,” Cornyn said of Schumer’s initial offer. “But it’s disappointing to see him now retracting his offer because that basically sets the DACA discussion back rather than advancing it.”

The administration has also pushed for broader changes to asylum policy and laws governing unaccompanied migrant children. Conservatives argue that’s all part of border security, but Democrats and some Republicans say those discussions are too broad.

Still, White House officials have also signaled they would be open to legalizing a broader universe of young immigrants beyond the 690,000 who had held DACA permits when Trump announced he would rescind the program. That moves them closer to what Durbin and Graham had been seeking, but Cornyn said Tuesday “that’s a subject of negotiation” and that more would be needed on border security.

Other Republicans say other elements of the bipartisan plan are insufficient. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) pointed to proposed changes to the diversity visa lottery. The bipartisan plan would reallocate the visas toward a new merit-based system from underrepresented countries, as well as replace visas being terminated with Trump’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for key countries.

Johnson didn’t think that was enough. “I think what they’re doing to the diversity lottery, it’s to some extent, changing the name,” he said.

Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, a conservative senator close to Trump, dismissed the notion that the bipartisan plan was even a starting point. “It doesn’t solve the problem. We’ll be right back here in five years,” he said.

Said one senior administration official: “It is going to take bringing together multiple factions. It’s not just going to be negotiated at the leadership table."

Republicans who are talking privately with members of the bipartisan group say they’re not doing so because the Graham-Durbin bill is gaining steam. Instead, it’s a recognition that bill simply cannot get the votes to pass the Senate.

“They tried to bring a broader group in to say we’re going to get 70 votes in the Senate,” Lankford said.

But liberals are skeptical about scrapping Graham-Durbin altogether. They worry Republicans will tack on too many conservative immigration proposals to a Dreamers bill that are anathema to the left.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), the first Latina senator, said that bogging down urgent DACA negotiations with a sweeping GOP bill would mean conservative “comprehensive immigration reform on the backs of Dreamers. That’s wrong.”

Durbin said all 49 members of the Democratic caucus were “clearly on board” with the deal he hammered out privately with the group of six senators. But liberals are still wary Republicans will drag it to the right.

“Durbin-Graham is not the Democratic proposal,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). “It was a bipartisan compromise. So this doesn’t become the new left pole.”