Politics

Sanders Lays Out White House Goals In Amnesty Deal

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Alex Pfeiffer White House Correspondent
Font Size:

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders laid out Friday a series of actions the Trump administration would like to see coupled with an amnesty for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) beneficiaries.

President Trump has called for Congress to “legalize” the DACA program, which protects roughly 800,000 illegal immigrants. Sanders said Friday that there is no settled deal. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed this week that Trump agreed to a deal protecting DACA beneficiaries without funding a southern border wall.

Right now our goal, our focus is making sure [DACA] is taken care of with also coupling that with massive border security, interior enforcement,” Sanders said.

There are “some specific things we would like to see,” she said, mentioning an “end to sanctuary cities, expedited removal, more immigration judges, supporting things like the RAISE Act.”

Two of these goals, expedited removal and more immigration judges, deal with the extensive immigration court backlog. A January executive order by Trump authorized the Department of Homeland Security to deport illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for less than two years without a court hearing. DHS has told The Daily Caller that it is examining how much to expand it.

The Raise Act would end chain migration and severely cut legal immigration. The White House’s Friday messaging has focused on ending chain migration along with DACA.

“CHAIN MIGRATION cannot be allowed to be part of any legislation on Immigration!” Trump tweeted Friday morning.

White House legislative director Marc Short said later in an MSNBC interview that “ending chain migration is an important part” of immigration reform.

Sanders, however, noted that ending chain migration is not a “red line.”