Big border deal fades before talks even begin

Democrats and Republicans are unlikely to trade wall funding for Dreamer relief in their dash to avert another shutdown.

By RACHAEL BADE and BURGESS EVERETT 01/29/2019 07:19 PM EST Updated 01/29/2019 08:04 PM EST

Congressional negotiators haven’t even held their first meeting to avert another shutdown, but the prospect of a big deal on border security and immigration is essentially dead.

When President Donald Trump caved in on the 35-day shutdown fight last week, he encouraged Congress to come up with a compromise — perhaps a trade of wall funding for temporary relief for Dreamers as he had previously proposed.

But Democrats are ruling out the idea of negotiating on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, skeptical that Trump would actually provide a permanent fix for the young undocumented immigrants after he previously rejected just such a deal. Meanwhile, top Republicans also doubt an expansive agreement could be put together in the next three weeks.

The fading prospects of the negotiation mean Trump is likely to receive only a fraction of the $5.7 billion he’s been seeking for his southern barrier in any deal, if one can be put together at all by Feb. 15. Then he would have to decide whether to unilaterally move funds around by declaring a legally dubious national emergency or embrace another debilitating shutdown.

“I’ve tried to work with this administration on issues involving immigration with a great level of frustration. And I do not want to take so many innocent people whose fate is hanging in the balance of this political debate and start off with the premise that we have a likelihood of solving their problem,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Democratic negotiator on the conference committee, which meets for the first time Wednesday.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/29/border-wall-government-shutdown-1136358