Donald Trump urges House GOP to back immigration bill
President Donald Trump made a startling last-minute pitch Wednesday for a far-reaching Republican immigration bill that remained on track for defeat, just days after telling House lawmakers to stop wasting time on the effort until after the November elections. In his latest instance of whiplash on the issue, Trump tweeted Wednesday: “HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL, KNOWN AS GOODLATTE II, IN THEIR AFTERNOON VOTE TODAY, EVEN THOUGH THE DEMS WON’T LET IT PASS IN THE SENATE.” The tweet — which referenced Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., one of the bill’s sponsors — could well garner additional votes for a measure that was still expected to fail Wednesday. It was also the latest example of Trump’s erratic dealings with Congress. On Friday he dashed off a tweet, saying Republicans should “stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November.” Trump had heard from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who urged him to publicly support the bill, said a person familiar with the conversation who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. McCarthy, who is hoping to succeed Speaker Paul Ryan as speaker next year, and Trump have forged a close relationship. Hours later, the White House sent a letter to lawmakers restating its support, saying the legislation would “support the administration’s goals” on immigration. The bill’s defeat would be a telling rebuff of the leaders of a divided GOP. Staring down the possibility, the party’s lawmakers were considering Plan B: passing more narrow legislation by week’s end curbing the Trump administration’s contentious separating of migrant families. After months of trying to bridge the chasm between moderates and conservatives and two postponed votes, top Republicans braced for a showdown roll call Wednesday. Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., labeled the legislation “a great consensus bill” and tried putting the best face on the likely outcome. “What we have here is the seeds of consensus that will be gotten to, hopefully now but if not, later,” he told reporters Tuesday. The vote caps months of futile GOP efforts to pass wide-ranging legislation on an issue that could color scores of congressional races in this fall’s contest for House and perhaps Senate control. The Senate rejected three proposals in February, including one reflecting Trump’s hard-line policies and two bipartisan plans. Democrats and centrist Republicans from swing districts say the GOP could suffer because the party, steered by Trump’s anti-immigrant harangues, could be alienating pivotal moderate voters. But conservatives relish such tough stances. And rather than achieving middle ground, leaders’ efforts have largely underscored how irreconcilably divided the GOP is on the topic. The Republican compromise would provide a shot at citizenship for hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children. It would provide $25 billion for Trump to build his coveted wall with Mexico, restrict family-based immigration and bar the Homeland Security Department from taking migrant children from parents seized crossing into the country without authorization. Leaders were adding eleventh-hour provisions aimed at winning votes. One would make it easier for migrant farmworkers to stay longer in the country, the other would gradually require companies to use an electronic database to verify their employees’ U.S. citizenship. But those amendments didn’t remove the key stumbling block — the reluctance by conservatives to back legislation helping people who arrived illegally become citizens. Many Republicans deride that plan as amnesty for lawbreakers, a potential attack line their next primary challenger could wield against them. Also unhelpful has been Trump, who last week swerved from voicing support for the GOP immigration drive to denouncing it as a waste of time, since Democrats have the numbers in the closely divided Senate to kill any legislation they oppose. “He was helpful Tuesday, but Friday he wasn’t,” Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., lamented about Trump. Even the evolving, separate measure focused sharply on preventing family separation was hurting the compromise bill’s prospects. It offers Republicans a chance to vote to address the high-profile problem without backing pieces of the broader measure that might anger conservatives Democrats solidly oppose the GOP bill as punitive. Curbelo and Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., from districts with large numbers of Hispanic voters, helped force Ryan to stage immigration votes. This spring they launched a petition that could have led to House passage of liberal-leaning measures creating a pathway to citizenship, bills backed by Democrats but opposed by most Republicans. Leaders headed off the petition by urging GOP lawmakers to not sign it, partly by crafting the compromise package the House was voting on Wednesday. The House rejected a more conservative bill last week clamping down on legal immigration and lacking a way for the young immigrants to become citizens. With television and social media awash with images and wails of young children torn from migrant families, Republicans want to pass a narrower measure addressing those separations should the broader bill fail. Trump has issued an executive order reversing his own family separation policy, but around 2,000 children remain removed from relatives. GOP senators have rallied behind legislation ending the 20-day court-imposed limit on detaining families — along with steps aimed at speeding their prosecutions — and House Republicans are considering something similar. Many want to pass it by week’s end, when Congress starts a weeklong July 4 recess. “It’s a concern from a humanitarian standpoint, and we want to make sure that Republicans prove we can do both, we can uphold the law, we can also take care of families,” said Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., an influential House conservative. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., expressed hope that senators could negotiate a bipartisan accord that could pass easily. No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas said he hoped that would happen this week. But one of the four senators negotiating the legislation said more time will be needed. Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a brief interview that a ban against separating migrant families — the key feature of a bill she’s
House rejects hard-right immigration bill, baring GOP divide
The House killed a hard-right immigration bill Thursday, and Republican leaders delayed a planned vote on a compromise GOP package with the party’s lawmakers fiercely divided over an issue that has long confounded them. The conservative measure was defeated 231-193, with 41 Republicans — mostly moderates — joining Democrats in voting against it. Those defections — nearly 1 in 5 GOP lawmakers — underscored the party’s chasm over immigration and the election-year pressures Republicans face to stay true to districts that range from staunchly conservative to pro-immigrant. Thursday’s vote set the stage for debate on the second bill, this one crafted by Republican leaders in hopes of finding an accord between the party’s sparring moderate and conservative wings. That compromise was considered too lenient by some conservatives and seemed likely to fall, too, and aides said the final roll call would wait till Friday. Rejection of both would represent an embarrassment for President Donald Trump, who had embraced them. As if the internal GOP turmoil was not enough, the party’s political exposure on the issue has been intensified by heartbreaking images of migrant children separated from families and complicated by opaque statements by Trump. At the White House, Trump defended his administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all migrants caught illegally entering the country, a change that has caused thousands of families to be divided while the parents are detained. He said without it, “you would have a run on this country the likes of which nobody has ever seen.” He said he was inviting Congress’ top two Democrats, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to the White House for immigration bargaining. He called them “extremist open-border Democrats.” And in a tweet that seemed to undermine House leaders’ efforts to round up votes, he questioned the purpose of their legislation by suggesting it was doomed in the Senate anyway. Trump issued an executive order Wednesday aimed at reversing his own policy of taking immigrant children from their detained parents, but emotions remained high. “I was welcomed here,” a tearful Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., said during House debate, describing her journey to the U.S. as a child from Guatemala. “I was not put in a freezing cell.” In an embarrassing detour, the House used an early procedural vote to correct what Republicans called a drafting error — language providing $100 billion more than they’d planned to help build Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico. Instead of giving initial approval for $24.8 billion spread over the next five years, the legislation said it would open the door to $24.8 billion “for each” of the next five years. The rejected conservative bill would have granted no pathway to citizenship for young “Dreamers” who arrived in the country illegally as children, curbed legal immigration and bolstered border security. The second was a compromise between GOP moderates and the party’s conservatives that included an opportunity for citizenship for the young immigrants. It provides $25 billion for Trump’s wall, restrictions on legal immigration and language requiring the Homeland Security Department to keep migrant families together while they’re being processed for illegal entry to the U.S. Democrats oppose both measures as harsh. “It is not a compromise,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters. “It may be a compromise with the devil, but it is not a compromise with the Democrats.” Even before votes began, Trump complicated GOP efforts to round up votes. “What is the purpose of the House doing good immigration bills when you need 9 votes by Democrats in the Senate, and the Dems are only looking to Obstruct (which they feel is good for them in the Mid-Terms),” Trump wrote. “Republicans must get rid of the stupid Filibuster Rule-it is killing you!” In the unlikely event that the House approved the GOP compromise, it seemed certain to go nowhere in the GOP-run Senate. Democrats there have enough votes to use procedural delays to kill it. Sixty votes are needed to end filibusters. On Wednesday, Trump reversed himself and took executive action aimed at curbing the separation of families. His order seemed to stem some of the urgency for Congress to act. But GOP leaders were eager to hold the votes anyway. The roll calls would let Republicans assert to voters that they tried addressing the immigration problem. “Our members wanted to express themselves on an issue they care a great deal about,” Speaker Paul Ryan said. Passage of the GOP compromise was always a long shot, but failure may now come at a steeper price. Republicans and Trump have raised expectations that, in control of Congress and the White House, they can fix the nation’s long-standing immigration problems. When the crisis of family separations erupted at the border, GOP leaders revised the compromise bill to bolster a provision requiring parents and children to be held together in custody. It did so by eliminating the 20-day cap on holding minors and allowing indefinite detentions. Even though Trump has acted unilaterally to stem the family separations, lawmakers still prefer a legislative fix. The administration is not ending its “zero tolerance” approach to border prosecutions. If the new policy is rejected by the courts, which the administration acknowledges is a possibility, the debate could move back to square one. Senate Republicans, fearing Trump’s action will not withstand a legal challenge and eager to go on record opposing the administration’s policy, have unveiled their own legislation to keep detained immigrant families together. In the House, moderate Republicans forced the immigration debate to the fore by threatening to use a rare procedure to demand a vote. Led by Curt Curbelo and Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., many are from states with large populations of young “Dreamer” immigrants who now face deportation threats under Trump’s decision to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. A federal court challenge has kept the DACA program running for now. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
