President Donald Trump, in a series of early morning tweets Thursday, denied reports that he'd made a deal Wednesday night with Democrats on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and that the wall at the Mexican border is "already under construction."
He also asked, though, if anybody "really" wants to deport the nation's Dreamers, a nickname for people brought to the United States illegally by their parents.
Wednesday night, however, Democratic leaders said a deal had been reached with Trump to protect DACA recipients, and that the legislation would not include a border wall.
In a statement following their working dinner with Trump at the White House, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Pelosi reported that they had come to an agreement with Trump about protecting the estimated 800,000 young adults who remain in the United States under the DACA program, established by the Obama administration in June 2012.
Earlier this month, Trump announced that he would end the program, after giving Congress a six-month period to work on codifying it on law. President Barack Obama, while signing the executive order, said the measure was a temporary one to help protect dreamers from deportation.
Late Wednesday night, however, the White House did not mention that there was a deal excluding the border wall, and Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that excluding the wall was "certainly not agreed to."
"President Donald Trump had a constructive working dinner with Senate and House Minority Leaders, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi as well as administration officials to discuss policy and legislative priorities," the White House statement said. "These topics included tax reform, border security, DACA, infrastructure and trade. This is a positive step toward the president's strong commitment to bipartisan solutions for the issues most important to all Americans. The administration looks forward to continuing these conversations with leadership on both sides of the aisle."
On Wednesday, however, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, told CBS News that the president's immigration plan includes provisions that are similar to the Dream Act, whose failure to become law led to Obama's DACA program. His plan also includes funding for border security, but not for a wall, said Cuellar.
"The president also, did say that the wall doesn't necessarily have to be with DACA, it can be somewhere else so he'll give that a shot somewhere else but to tie it in, I think we are all on the same page that we are not going to tie the wall to DACA," Cuellar said.
White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short confirmed to CNN that Trump and Democrats did agree to fix DACA through Congress, but he panned the Democrats' claim that a deal was made as "intentionally misleading," reports CNN.
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