For Deal on ‘Dreamers,’ White House Will Demand Crackdown on Child Border Crossers

The New York Times reports:

The White House will demand this week that lawmakers harden the border against thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America before President Trump will agree to any deal with Democrats that allows the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers to stay in the United States legally.

Administration officials said Sunday that Mr. Trump would seek to slam shut what they described as loopholes that encouraged parents from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to send their children illegally into the United States, where many of them melt into American communities and become undocumented immigrants.

The demand is included in a list of legislative priorities for tougher immigration enforcement that Mr. Trump and his advisers were set to release on Sunday as they seek to establish their bargaining position in expected congressional negotiations later this year about the Dreamers, who were brought to the United States as small children and often have few ties to the countries of their birth.

Last month, the president abruptly ended an Obama-era policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, in which former President Barack Obama had used his executive authority to protect about 800,000 of the young immigrants from the threat of deportation and provide them legal work permits. If a deal is not reached by March, tens of thousands of the Dreamers will begin losing permission to work and protection from deportation.

In addition to a crackdown on unaccompanied children at the border, the document to be released on Sunday will insist that any deal to give the Dreamers a permanent legal status must include the construction of a wall across the southern border, aggressive efforts to crack down on illegal immigrants by deporting people who have stayed beyond the limits of their visas, and legislation to reduce legal immigration by creating a system that approves immigrants based on their skills, not their family connections.


Taken together, the proposals amount to a wish list for immigration hard-liners inside the White House, including Stephen Miller, the president’s top policy adviser, who has long advocated extremely aggressive efforts to prevent illegal entry into the country and crack down on undocumented immigrants already here.

Imagine that.