President Trump and senior administration officials were working furiously Thursday to scuttle a bipartisan plan to deal with young undocumented immigrants and boost border security as a Senate showdown over immigration loomed.
Senators prepared to vote on competing proposals, all of which looked doomed to fail, and top GOP leaders were doing little to encourage bipartisan accord. Overnight, the White House moved to beat back the emerging bipartisan consensus on immigration, sharply denouncing the proposal as a “mass amnesty” that would weaken border control.
In a Thursday morning tweet, Trump said, “While the Republicans and Democrats in Congress are working hard to come up with a solution to DACA, they should be strongly considering a system of Merit Based Immigration so that we will have the people ready, willing and able to help all of those companies moving into the USA!”
That appeared to reiterate his calls to end a diversity visa lottery program, which is not mentioned in a bipartisan plan unveiled late Wednesday. The issue of ending the program is what sparked Trump’s expletive-ridden tirade in a January Oval Office meeting with lawmakers.
