President Donald Trump is expressing openness to shifting his self-imposed deadline on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program while also predicting the government won’t shut down again.
“We want to do what’s right and we’re going to do what’s right, and we’re going to solve the DACA problem. And I don’t think the Democrats would want to pull another shutdown,” he told CNBC in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that aired Friday morning.
“But we’ll get it solved. And if we need a little more time, we’ll take a little more time. I want to get the problem solved correctly,” he added.
DACA protections for undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US illegally as children are set to expire March 5.
In September, the Trump administration formally announced the end of the DACA program and called on Congress to find a permanent legislative solution. But Congress has since struggled to find a bipartisan compromise.
The White House released its framework for immigration reform Thursday, which proposes giving 1.8 million young undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship in exchange for $25 billion for the long-promised wall and a host of other strict immigration reforms.
A White House official sold the plan as a “compromise position” that it believes would get 60 votes in the Senate — a point White House officials underscored multiple times on Thursday — and then could be “sent over to the House for additional improvement and modification.”
Speaking to CNBC, Trump said he didn’t think Democrats would shut down the government again, saying he believes Congress has a “good chance” of making a deal.
“Everybody wants to solve the DACA problem,” he said, later adding, “Nobody wants to take care of DACA more than myself and the Republican Party.”