Senate and House leaders met Monday to discuss steps forward on immigration in the first gathering they have had since President Donald Trump unveiled his immigration framework last week.
But after the meeting, it remained unclear how either side could reach agreement with the other, even after weeks of negotiations.
The meeting, which stretched just over 40 minutes, featured “candid” discussion, according to House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, and included White House officials such as chief of staff John Kelly and Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short as well as Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen.
“I think we were candid as to where each one of us was coming from,” Hoyer said after leaving the meeting. “I don’t think anybody was not straightforward, which was useful.”
According to one GOP aide, Kelly did not stress at any point that he was there to deliver a specific or pointed message from the President in the meeting.
Trump is expected to discuss his immigration proposal, including strong limits to legal immigration, at his first State of the Union address Tuesday.
Sen. Dick Durbin told CNN the meeting was “cordial” with “back and forth” between the lawmakers and Kelly and Nielsen. But, he said, he still thinks the administration is including too much in its request, especially under the name “border security.”
“This has not been productive,” the Illinois Democrat said of the group. “We’ve had three or four meetings of principals, five or six meetings of staff, and we don’t have much to show for it. But we do have some looming deadlines. I hope that moves us.”
He added that he hoped a Tuesday session will offer a “better chance” at “specifics.”
Lawmakers have a handful of days left to find consensus on immigration if they are to meet a February 8 deadline for a government funding measure, but fierce disagreements over how to structure the future of legal immigration still threaten to derail negotiations.
The President’s proposal includes a path to citizenship for 1.8 million individuals eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but also makes drastic changes to so-called chain migration or family reunification programs, something Democrats have said they won’t accept, and includes undetailed closes to “legal loopholes,” as the White House puts it, which could mean a vast expansion of federal enforcement and deportation authority.
Leaving the meeting, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told reporters that the President’s plan was the de facto starting point, but that after the meeting there had been “a lot of talking going on and the clock is ticking.”
“I know the Democrats would like to take the DACA piece and forget the rest, but we’re not going to do that,” the Texas Republican said.
Leaving a second meeting she held just after the first with House conservatives who have pushed for a more aggressive conservative proposal, Nielsen wouldn’t say whether the President’s framework was a final offer.
“It’s the President’s offer. We’re working on it from there,” she told CNN.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-California, said the meeting was more productive than others in the past, adding that the group would meet again Tuesday.
The obstacles that await the group are only growing, however. Tuesday night is the State of the Union address, which is expected to take up most of the political energy in Washington, and then lawmakers will leave DC for their respective Democratic and Republican retreats. The question now is whether lawmakers will tackle the full cadre of items Trump wants them to or abandon his plan for a simpler proposal that protects DACA recipients in exchange for bolstered border funding.
McCarthy shot down the idea that Congress would simply extend DACA for a year rather than tackle family reunification and the diversity lottery, which are considered far thornier issues, a possibility Cornyn himself has suggested to reporters.
McCarthy shook his head no.
“We got to finish this once and for all,” he said.