Ryan: Dems will have ‘to stomach’ Trump win on immigration

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) suggested Friday that a bipartisan deal to keep protections for young immigrants could ultimately be tough for some Democrats who are deeply opposed to President Trump.

A compromise to shield immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children from deportation would be a significant win for Democratic leaders, who remain frustrated in the minority, as well as Trump, who is still in search of a major legislative accomplishment since his inauguration eight months ago.

“They’ll have to stomach the fact that yes, this president will be successful in doing something that hasn’t been done for years, which is advancing some immigration reform, advancing security, advancing enforcement and advancing a law that fixes the [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] problem so these kids don’t get kicked out,” Ryan told WISN’s Vicki McKenna.

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“That would be victory for this president. And that would be, if you’re a politician and you’re partisan and you don’t want to see him be successful, that will be a tough pill to swallow,” he said.

Immigration reform has indeed for decades eluded presidents seeking a long-term solution from Congress. The House under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) passed the DREAM Act in 2010 to grant legal status to people brought to the U.S. illegally as children. But it failed in the Senate, which was also controlled by Democrats at the time.

The inability to advance immigration legislation led former President Obama to establish the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, which the Trump administration is phasing out over the next six months.

Trump met with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) this week to discuss a path forward on replacing DACA.

Pelosi and Schumer released a joint statement after the dinner saying they agreed to work toward a deal that includes border security measures — but not anything that could be construed as building Trump’s promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Trump said Thursday that “the wall will come later,” but emphasized any deal would include “massive border security” measures.

“We’re working on a plan for DACA. People want to see that happen. You have 800,000 young people, brought here, no fault of their own,” Trump said. “And I think something can happen, we’ll see what happens, but something will happen.”

Ryan, who did not attend the dinner with Democratic leaders but spoke with Trump on Thursday, emphasized it was “just a discussion.”

The attempts at bipartisanship are a stark turnaround from even a month ago, when multiple Democrats said Trump should be removed from office over his equivocating response to the violence stemming from a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said he planned to file articles of impeachment in response to Trump’s response to the Charlottesville violence. And Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) already filed an article of impeachment this summer alleging that Trump obstructed justice by firing James Comey as FBI director amid the investigation of possible ties between his campaign and Russia.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a vocal Trump critic who has also called for his impeachment, tweeted earlier Friday that “Democrats can’t trust Trump, Republicans can’t trust Trump, and Melania can’t trust Trump.”

Yet Pelosi and Schumer have expressed cautious optimism about working with Trump on one of their top priorities.

“I think it’s a one-by-one thing,” Pelosi told reporters on Thursday. “But there’s plenty of work to be done in many areas, and when we talk about this, and we talk about infrastructure, we talk about a number of issues — trade, et cetera — there are plenty of areas to find common ground. This is one of them, and maybe on some other issues, we won’t find common ground.”