Trump's budget director says the president's view on DACA 'depends on what we get in exchange'

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 23 January 2018

President Trump does not have any firm beliefs about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney seemed to say in an interview on CNN on Tuesday.

The White House wants "a large [immigration policy] agreement. We want a big deal that solves the reason we have a DACA problem in the first place," Mulvaney said. "If you simply gave amnesty, whatever you want to call it, to the folks who are here, but don't solve border security, then you're simply delaying another DACA problem 10 or 15 years from now."

Pressed by CNN's Chris Cuomo to explain Trump's terms and conditions for allowing DACA recipients, who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children, to stay in America, Mulvaney said Trump's position "depends on what we get in exchange. What do we get for border security? What do we get for the wall?" Watch his comments in context below. Bonnie Kristian

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.