President Donald Trump, while outlining his immigration reform demands, said Tuesday that any bill Democrats and Republicans agree to should be a “bill of love.”
Speaking in the Cabinet Room in the White House with Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Trump urged people to “put country before party” but said he would not protect hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation without funding for a border wall along the US-Mexico border and a series of immigration changes.
“This should be a bill of love,” Trump said. “Truly, it should be a bill of love and we can do that.”
He added: “But it also has to be a bill where we are able to secure our border.”
Trump has sent mixed messages on immigration since Democrats and Republicans have begun negotiating a possible deal. On Tuesday, he said he would agree to anything the men and women he met with agreed to.
“I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with,” Trump said. “I am very much reliant on the people in this room. I know most of the people on both sides, have a lot of respect for the people on both sides, and what I approve is going to be very much reliant on what the people in this room come to me with.”
Trump has long said he would not protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) participants — of which there are nearly 800,000 who were brought to the United States illegal as children — from deportation without ending so-called chain migration, guidelines that allow people in the United States to bring in family members from abroad, and the visa lottery system, a program that distributes around 50,000 visas to countries where there is a low rate of immigration to the US.
“The Democrats have been told, and fully understand, that there can be no DACA without the desperately needed WALL at the Southern Border and an END to the horrible Chain Migration & ridiculous Lottery System of Immigration etc,” Trump tweeted in December. “We must protect our Country at all cost!”
Trump reiterated that feeling on Tuesday.
“Yes, it has to be,” Trump said when asked on whether funding for his border wall would have to be part of any agreement.
Trump ended the DACA program in September. At the time, the President said he wanted Congress to step in to save the program but they have yet to do that.
