Congressional Republicans, in translation: “Hey, Democrats. Donald Trump has handed us 800,000 Dreamers as hostages. What are you going to give us for their futures? Sure, most of us know we need to do something about this or we’ll look like monsters, but we’re still going to demand a big ransom.” That ransom might be funding for Trump’s precious border wall, or:
“The bottom line of it is, I don’t think DACA as a clean bill can get through the Congress by itself,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a call with reporters on Tuesday, according to Politico. He added that this was an “opportunity for compromise between people that want DACA plus a lot of other things dealing with legal immigration, and I suppose even some things dealing with illegal immigration, that can probably be packaged together.”
Some Republicans want to pair protections for Dreamers with cutting legal immigration, which Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is pushing through in a bill called the RAISE Act. That legislation ― which has nothing to do with Dreamers ― was the only specific measure that Trump or Attorney General Jeff Sessions mentioned on Tuesday while announcing the DACA decision. The RAISE Act would face opposition not just from Democrats, but some Republicans as well.
Look for anti-immigrant extremists to push an all of the above demands package—wall, limits on legal immigration, and probably more—in exchange for minor protections for Dreamers. Meanwhile, Republicans who realize how bad a look it will be to deport hundreds of thousands of young people who are by definition law-abiding and hard-working will be scrambling to strike a balance between Dreamer protections and protecting themselves from far-right primary challenges next year, just as Trump’s six-month deadline is coming up. With this Congress, the safe bet is always on nothing getting done.