President-elect Donald Trump has big plans to deliver on his campaign pledge to secure the southern border, pledging to issue a flurry of executive actions on day one of his presidency to stem the massive flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S.
But questions remain about when and how Trump plans to deliver on his fresh pledge to protect the so-called “Dreamers” – a term for immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and do not have a path to citizenship.
“The Dreamers are going to come later, and we have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview earlier this month with NBC’s Kristen Welker. “And many of these are middle-aged people now. They don’t even speak the language of their country. And yes, we’re going to do something about the Dreamers.”
Pressed further by Welker, Trump said: “I will work with the Democrats on a plan. And if we can come up with a plan, but the Democrats have made it very, very difficult to do anything. Republicans are very open to the Dreamers.”
Trump’s openness to passing legislation relating to the Dreamers comes after his first administration tried unsuccessfully to overturn President Obama’s Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
If Republicans move forward at some point over the next four years with comprehensive efforts to find a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of adults brought to the U.S. illegally as children, Trump will present a new opportunity for congressional Democrats — after a blowout electoral loss, will they be introspective or reflexively oppositional to everything on the GOP’s agenda?
“Protecting the Dreamers has been a broadly, bipartisan goal, across the country and among lawmakers so it would be great if he’s willing to do that,” says Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D., Pa.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee.
“There is definitely a real hope for comprehensive immigration reform” under the Trump administration, says Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.).
It’s far from clear what Dreamer-related legislation would even look like, and whether there will be an appetite to legislate on this issue during an administration that has pledged to carry out the largest mass deportation program in history.
And progressives in Congress already sound skeptical that Trump will follow through on his pledge.
“I’m always willing to vote to protect Dreamers. Trump always seems to say something and then do the opposite, so I don’t believe that he knows how or necessarily wants to,” says newly elected Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairman Greg Casar (D., Tex.). “But if a vote gets put to the floor to protect Dreamers, then doesn’t matter to me which party proposes, I’d be for it.”
Newly elected Senate GOP Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is hoping to pass party-line legislation on the border, defense, and energy through the budget reconciliation process at the start of the Trump administration, though the details of that package remain unclear, and Thune himself recently soured on the likelihood that Dreamer-related legislation will hit the Senate floor anytime soon.
“The sweet spot on immigration reform has eluded us a number of times. But obviously, if there is a bipartisan willingness to take on that issue, then I’m certainly open to what we can do,” Thune recently told NBC News. “It’d be better long term if we could come up with some legislative solutions, but in the last few administrations, everything’s been done by executive action. So it’s going to take something to break that logjam.”
In 2018, Senators Mike Rounds (R., S.D.) and Angus King (I., Maine) spearheaded a bipartisan effort to pair a $25 billion border security with legislation that would give Dreamers a pathway to citizenship that “would have taken about 13 years to achieve,” Rounds told NR on the hill this week. Eight Senate Republicans voted in favor of the bill and three Senate Democrats voted against it (including then-Senator Kamala Harris D., Calif.).
The effort failed after Senators Thom Tillis (N.C.) and James Lankford (R., Okla.) — two Republicans seen as must-win votes for bipartisan immigration legislation — voted against the proposal, as did three other GOP senators who voted in favor of the 2013 immigration reform legislation. In the end, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security released a statement pouring cold water on the notion that the bill could surpass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, arguing that the legislation would make the U.S. “a sanctuary nation where ignoring the rule of law is encouraged.”
Getting some Republican border hawks to vote yes on a path to citizenship for Dreamers may also be a tough sell unless legislation is paired with comprehensive border security reform that may be a step too far for their colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
“For me to agree any with any sort of amnesty,” says Senate Judiciary Committee member and Republican Senator John Kennedy, “I’m going to have to see it as part of a larger plan that will solve the border crisis permanently and fix legal immigration. I don’t think the Democrats will ever agree to that.”