President Trump offering Democrats targeted amnesty in exchange for enhanced border security is his latest big political risk as his own party prepares to defend its congressional majorities.
Republicans have split on immigration for a decade plus; any deal to save nearly 1 million illegal immigrants from deportation — even the sympathetic Dreamer population, adults brought to the U.S. unwittingly as children — risks stoking divisions that costing the GOP seats in 2018.
Just moving a bill through Congress, even with Trump's imprimatur, could spark a civil war across the Republican ecosystem of elected officials, conservative advocacy groups and media personalities, capped — pass or fail — by messy primary contests and defeated vulnerable incumbents in the general election.
"Everyone of those things is true," conceded a concerned Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, the House Rules Committee chairman who spent two terms leading the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party's House campaign arm, upon being presented with this nightmare scenario.
The agreement Trump is negotiating with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., would enshrine into law the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, allowing qualified illegal immigrant adults brought to the U.S. as children to remain here on a permanent legal basis.
Get the Exclusive
05.17.2024