When the U.S. government reopens, Dreamers will likely be no closer to gaining deportation protections and, in fact, another 122 will continue to lose their protections every day. Donald Trump proved useless in the negotiations to protect Dreamers, which left their fate in the hands of the gutless Paul Ryan, who has managed to let a small nativist faction in his caucus entirely dictate the terms of any agreement. It represents the wholesale takeover of the Republican party by its nativist anti-immigration wing.
Put in starker terms, Ryan has put U.S. immigration policy entirely in the hands of people like Iowa Rep. Steve King, who once mused that for every Dreamer who's a valedictorian, there's “another hundred out there who weigh a hundred and thirty pounds—and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling seventy-five pounds of marijuana across the desert."
How do we know? Because every time the Senate came up with any sort of deal, Ryan got on the phone with either Senate Leader Mitch McConnell or Donald Jell-O Trump and nixed it—telling them not to take the deal or alternately threatening that he wouldn't bring it to the floor in the House.
Ryan urged the president not to negotiate any sort of deal that includes protections for undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country as children, known as “dreamers,” until the government has been reopened.
First the Freedom Caucus was bragging about Ryan's surrender to them, and now he's getting praise from the anti-immigration hardliners in the House for refusing to give an inch during the shutdown negotiations.
That leaves any Dreamer negotiations squarely on the shoulders of a guy who was shameless enough at the outset of last year to assure a Dreamer-turned-mom—who was first brought here at age 11—that she didn’t need to worry about being deported. Here’s part of the exchange during a town hall in January 2017.
"I want you to know that DACA has helped me. Do you think that I should be deported?" the woman asked, standing alongside her daughter.
"No," Ryan replied. "First of all, I can see that you love your daughter and you are a nice person who has a great future ahead of you, and I hope your future is here."
Ryan went on tell the woman that Dreamers wouldn't be the "focus" of the GOP’s immigration policies.
"What we have to do is find a way to make sure that you can get right with the law and we have to do this in a good way so that the rug doesn't get pulled out from under you and your family gets separated. That's the way we feel, and that is exactly what our new incoming president has stated he wants to do. [...] I'm sure you're a great contributor to your community and we don't want to see you get separated from your family."
That same president had two deals on the table that could have helped the woman who Ryan encouraged not to be afraid, and he spiked both of them at Ryan’s behest.
Paul Ryan lied to that woman, plain and simple. He looked straight into her eyes and told her a tall tale of Republicans being responsible and empathic and it sure looked good for the cameras. But it was a total fabrication because he hasn’t lifted a finger to help her or her family or some 800,000 other Dreamers who are now living a nightmare.
