The White House will release a “legislative framework” for an immigration deal on Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said.
“The President wants to lead on this issue and that’s exactly what we’ll do,” she said.
Sanders declined to provide details about what would be included in the framework during her briefing on Wednesday.
“We want to see a legislative package that addresses the four things that we’ve laid out that can pass both the House and the Senate and make its way to the President’s desk so that we can fix our immigration system,” she said.
She also declined to say whether President Donald Trump would sign onto a deal that would give so-called Dreamers a path to citizenship.
“The President’s in a position to lay out a framework. There’s nothing currently on the table that addresses all of the concerns … like this framework does,” Sanders said.
But over on Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said talks on immigration and border security are “starting over.”
“We’re starting over,” Schumer told CNN on Wednesday when asked about the latest on the standoff over the Congress’ plans for addressing the expiring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. “I took our thing off — they took their thing off the table, I took our thing, we’re starting over.”
Schumer was referring to an offer he made Trump last week to authorize upward of $20 billion for a border wall, a signature campaign pledge for the President, in exchange for protecting recipients of DACA, young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children. Trump decided last fall to end the program by March 5, 2018, and Congress has since failed to reach agreement with the White House about how to extend it.
The White House rejected Schumer’s offer.