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Top Democrats Claim Trump Has Agreed To Support DACA Protections

by Celia Darrough
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Wednesday night, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that President Trump has agreed to support DACA protections becoming law. In addition, they claimed that they have found a bipartisan position on border security and will agree on a package of laws that will not include legislation regarding the controversial wall Trump wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border.

After a dinner between the congress members and the president, the two Democratic leaders released a joint statement that read:

We had a very productive meeting at the White House with the President. The discussion focused on DACA. We agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that's acceptable to both sides.

The White House has not yet commented on what exactly was agreed upon during the meeting, though it did say in a statement that Trump had "a constructive working dinner" with the Democratic leaders.

"This is a positive step toward the President's strong commitment to bipartisan solutions for the issues most important to all Americans," the statement read. "The administration looks forward to continuing these conversations with leadership on both sides of the aisle."

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However, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders reportedly pushed back on the claims that a border security package that leaves out the border wall was agreed upon. "While DACA and border security were both discussed, excluding the wall was certainly not agreed to," Huckabee Sanders said, according to CNN.

Earlier Wednesday, in a bipartisan meeting with legislators, Trump outlined his current thoughts on DACA, saying:

We want to see if we can do something with regard to immigration, with regard to the 800,000 people that are now young people. They’re not children anymore. They were children, now they’re young people. But we want to see if we can do something in a bipartisan fashion so that we can solve the DACA problem and other immigration problems. So we’ll be discussing that today.
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When he was asked about why he would have Schumer and Pelosi over for dinner, asking what his "message for skeptical conservatives" would be, Trump replied:

Well, I’m conservative and, I will tell you, I’m not skeptical. And I think that if we can do things in a bipartisan manner, that will be great.

Now, it might not work out, in which case, we’ll try and do them without. But I think if we can do, in a bipartisan manner — if you look at some of the greatest legislation ever passed, it was done on a bipartisan manner. And so that’s why we’re going to give it a shot. Right, Tom? And we’ll see what we can do. And if it works out, great. And if it doesn’t work out, great. Hopefully we’ll be able to do it anyways — Republicans.

There are approximately 700,000 undocumented immigrants who are part of the DACA program, which allows certain protections for young people who were brought to the United States as children. Trump announced that he would end the program, putting those people's lives in jeopardy, but he later tweeted, "For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about - No action!"