White House legislative director Marc Short told reporters Tuesday that he would not “prejudge” if funding for President Donald Trump’s signature border wall would be included in legislation to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients.
“The President is committed to standing by his commitment that a physical structure is what is needed to protect the American people — whether that is specifically part of a DACA package — or whether that is another package, I’m not going to prejudge that today,” Short said.
Short made his comments at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Tuesday morning. The news comes a week after House Speaker Paul Ryan told his conference that he wanted to find a legislative solution for the young DACA recipients in the country who entered the US illegally as children, but that any solution would need to include a border security portion.
Now that that the White House has given Congress six months to find a legislative fix for DACA, discussions are underway at the Capitol. It appears, however, that for now the talks are very much in the early stages.
According to one source with knowledge of a conversation between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Trump has already asked that any fix for DACA recipients come with funding for a border wall.
The source told CNN that last Thursday during a meeting at the White House, Trump pitched Schumer on a plan to trade protections for DACA recipients for border wall funding.
“Trump wants the wall for DREAMer protections. Schumer made it clear to the President that Democrats absolutely will not make that trade,” the source said.