A top immigration hard-liner said Monday he thinks Donald Trump’s positions on immigration are like Jell-O and accused the president of backing “limited amnesty” for immigrants in the country illegally.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who advised Trump on immigration issues during the 2016 campaign, said he has grown frustrated by Trump’s failed promises to build a wall on the southern border with Mexico and end protections for young immigrants enrolled in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
“We finally elected a president who called for the end of amnesty and he was going to end DACA at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, and we all expected that would happen without fanfare. Instead, we learned that permits were being issued. Then, he served [DACA] up as a bargaining chip” to build the wall, King told The Hill in an interview in the Capitol.
“When he sent out his tweet Sept. 5 that he was going to end DACA, that tweet was pretty clear: Get your act together, make your arrangements. It’s over,” King went on. “Then the next day, it seemed that things changed a little bit and he opened the door to negotiation” with Democratic leaders Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.).
“Now he’s for some sort of a DACA fix. And he has transformed himself as someone who’s going to restore the rule of law to the guy who’s essentially leading with a limited amnesty and trying to get enforcement on the other side of that. I said, why would you negotiate against yourself?" King said.
“He had a mandate to end DACA; he had a mandate to build the wall, a mandate to end sanctuary cities, a mandate to pass Kate’s Law,” King continued. “In fact, I actually wrote much of his first statement on immigration when he announced his candidacy.”
“So you’re saying the president has been waffling on the issue of immigration?” a reporter asked King.
“He knows that,” replied King, who spoke to Trump two weeks ago. “I’ve been talking to him about that. ... He says, ‘I’ve got to get this passed 500 people,’ meaning 535 lawmakers, so he’s saying he’s adjusting to the political reality. I say stand on principle.”
“It’s stunning to me that you can stand on principle, and when pragmatism kicks in, it trumps principle,” King said. “Where I live, in my ideological world, it’s the exact opposite.”
King and other immigration hawks are wary of a deal struck between Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to reopen the federal government after a three-day shutdown.
McConnell has pledged to bring a bipartisan immigration bill to the floor by Feb. 8 that would shield from deportation hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients.
A bipartisan plan pitched by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would provide a path to citizenship for the young immigrants. But King is vehemently opposed to offering legal status to DACA recipients.
King’s criticism of Trump’s handling of the immigration issue echoed that of Schumer, who lambasted the president over the weekend as an unreliable negotiating partner who keeps changing his position.
“Negotiating with this White House is like negotiating with Jell-O,” Schumer said amid talks to fund the government.
Let's block Muslims the real killers, and not little kids from Mexico.
Yeah, why worry about tens of millions of Mexicans invading the US and siphoning taxpayer resources and bleeding us dry, drug warlord hits, stolen jobs, ilegally VOTING for Democrats, our national, state and local LE ignoring enforcing THE laws -- whether vehicular, fraud, B&E...
And they grow up to become arrogant demanding big kids because of the way they are raised. Then they go on to take courses in political activism at Berkely.
Yeah, why worry about tens of millions of Mexicans invading the US and siphoning taxpayer resources and bleeding us dry, drug warlord hits, stolen jobs, ilegally VOTING for Democrats, our national, state and local LE ignoring enforcing THE laws -- whether vehicular, fraud, B&E...
You guys have inspired me. The other day I came up with a very fitting name for the far left --Dem-wits. After all the posts from you and the others on the far right, I've come up with an equally fitting name for you. The Extreme Right Republicans, or ERR's. The rest of us, including Trump & Co., are in the middle somewhere.
Anyhow the poor Mexicans kids are safe now and Trump got his wall and the government will not be shut down. Definitely a win-win-win deal put together by the master of deal-making. And BTW, if one of those little kids does grows up to be a hit-man for a drug gang as you fear, Trump has made it clear that they and any other Mexican-born murderers will immediately be deported back to Mexico.
Sometimes I think that it's only Trump (and his great team-members, especially Sarah) who are the sane ones, and it's the rest of Washington (and/or the rest of the world) who are the crazy ones.
