How many times has Donald Trump rejected bipartisan proposals—including ones that came directly from himself—to permanently protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients he’s put at the mercy of his Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) mass deportation agents by rescinding the program last September? Let us count the ways:
September 13: Trump has dinner with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi at the White House, after which the two Democrats say they agreed in broad strokes to a DACA-border security deal that doesn't include Trump's wall. Trump initially seems on the same page, then the White House and Republicans walk it back. Trump tweets about how "good, educated and accomplished" DACA recipients are.
October 8: The White House unveils what it calls its priorities for a DACA deal, a laundry list of aggressive conservative immigration measures that Democrats and a handful of Republicans rejected as rife with poison pills.
November 2: Republican lawmakers meet with Trump at the White House and rule out attaching any DACA deal to year-end funding bill before a possible shutdown.
January 9: Trump holds bipartisan meeting at the White House that cameras televise for nearly an hour. He indicates multiple times he is willing to compromise on DACA, despite some contradictions within the meetings, and says "when this group comes back -- hopefully with an agreement -- this group and others from the Senate, from the House, comes back with an agreement, I'm signing it." The so-called "four pillars" also come out of this meeting -- that a deal shall include DACA, family-based migration, the diversity lottery and border security.
January 11: After months of meetings, Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Lindsey Graham go to the White House to propose to Trump a compromise worked out by their group of six bipartisan senators. The offer includes a path to citizenship for eligible young immigrants, the first year of Trump's border wall funding, ending the diversity visa lottery and reallocating those visas, and restricting the ability of former DACA recipients to sponsor family.
“Trump and the White House invite hardline Republicans to the meeting and he rejects the deal, making his now-infamous ‘shithole countries’ comment in the process.” A CNN timeline outlines at least three more instances of Trump rejecting bipartisan proposals that would have protected DACA recipients and even given him $20 billion in funding for his stupid border wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for.
On January 19, “Schumer and Trump meet for lunch at the White House. Schumer offered Trump the upwards of $20 billion he wanted for his border wall in exchange for a pathway to citizenship for the eligible immigrant population. The deal is rejected, and government shuts down at midnight”:
January 22: Government reopens after Republicans Graham and Jeff Flake secure a public commitment from Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell to hold a future immigration floor vote. Bipartisan negotiations resume.
January 25: White House releases its proposal for a DACA deal under the four pillars, which includes a generous path to citizenship for eligible immigrants, but also a number of impossible-to-swallow provisions for Democrats and some Republicans under the auspices of family-based migration and border security.
February 14: A bipartisan group of senators unveils a compromise plan, which includes $25 billion for the border, a pathway to citizenship for the immigrants, cuts to one slim category of family-based migration and prevents the parents who brought their children to the US illegally from ever being sponsored for citizenship by those children.
February 15: White House goes all out to stop the bipartisan compromise deal, which fails to get the necessary 60 votes in the Senate, with 54 votes.
Out of the four immigration proposals that got a vote that day, the Grassley proposal—which mirrored Stephen Miller’s plan—was resoundingly rejected as an extreme non-starter, getting only 39 votes in support. But wait, Trump said that “we are going to show great heart” to DACA recipients, so he’s totally going to come back to the table with a new deal, right?
March 14: With roughly a week to go before the major government spending package known as the omnibus must pass, White House suddenly signals a desire for a DACA-border deal. Publicly, the White House says they oppose a temporary fix.
March 22: Congress passes an omnibus without DACA, virtually ensuring it will not be addressed before midterms.
March 23: Trump signs the omnibus, rails on Democrats for, he says, not caring about DACA.
“DACA was abandoned by the Democrats,” Trump tweeted before signing the omnibus, but this is gaslighting, pure and simple. This certainly won’t be the last time Trump will lie about this, and this is a man who has no regard for the truth, but no matter what he and his enablers say, it’s fact that he created this crisis by rescinding DACA and he continues prolonging it in the name of his white supremacist agenda.
”You have called on Congress to act to address this issue,” the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) wrote to Trump this past February. “However, you have thwarted every bipartisan, narrow agreement that seeks to provide relief to Dreamers … we cannot expect Congress to make any headway on protecting Dreamers until the White House and Republicans, who control every branch of government, choose to work with Democrats on a bipartisan DACA fix.”