Mulvaney: Trump’s DACA position ‘depends on what we get in exchange’

White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday that President Trump’s position on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program depends on what the White House gets in an immigration deal.

“We want a large agreement. We want a big deal that solves the reason we have a DACA problem in the first place,” Mulvaney said on CNN’s “New Day.”

“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,” he added.

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Mulvaney stressed that Trump is looking for an immigration bill that includes funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and that immigration issues must be dealt with “holistically.”

Asked how Trump will decide which immigrants get to stay in the country and how they get to stay in the country, Mulvaney said it “depends on what we get in exchange.”

The Trump administration announced last year it was rescinding DACA, an Obama-era program that allows certain immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children, called “Dreamers,” to remain in the country without fear of deportation. 

After Congress voted Monday to end a three-day government shutdown, Trump teased negotiations on immigration reform, saying Tuesday morning that “nobody knows for sure” if Republicans and Democrats will reach a deal on DACA.

Trump hosted a group of bipartisan lawmakers earlier this month and urged them to craft a “bill of love” to address DACA. He said then he would sign whatever that group brought to him, but members of both parties have since criticized Trump for being unclear on his position on immigration.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he’d prefer to bring an immigration bill to the Senate floor that has Trump’s support but noted the president “has not yet indicated what measure he is willing to sign.”

Amid the shutdown over the weekend, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) compared his immigration discussions with Trump to “negotiating with Jell-O.”