Trump will veto any DACA bill that doesn't match his immigration goals, a White House official says

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last updated 14 February 2018

President Trump has gone from scrapping the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration program to promising, on camera, to sign any "bill of love" to protect DACA recipients that Congress sends him to, last weekend, accusing Democrats of not being serious about negotiating a bipartisan DACA replacement. Now, a senior administration official tells Axios that Trump "will veto any bill that doesn't advance his common-sense immigration reforms," severely undermining the immigration legislation being forged in the Senate this week.

One of the proposals before the Senate does roughly match the four pillars Trump wants to see in an immigration bill, but the three parts not dealing with DACA focus on long-term curtailing of legal immigration and funding Trump's border wall. "There's almost zero chance the Senate approves a bill Trump will like," Axios notes. The senior White House official, who may or may not be Stephen Miller, told Axios' Mike Allen and Jonathan Swan that Democrats who oppose Trump's approach will "be walking into a political suicide march," but Democrats don't seem to be too concerned.

"Their spin is laughably bad," a Senate Democratic official tells Axios. Trump "ended the [DACA] program. He would be deporting them. Who in their right mind would blame Democrats?" Trump is "using DREAMers as leverage to achieve immigration policies that are broadly unpopular," the Democrat added. Polls show broad support for giving DREAMers — young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children — legal status or citizenship. Two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to continue the DACA program, at least temporarily, making Trump's March 5 deadline more or less moot.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.