Schumer: Offer on border wall is ‘off the table’
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) confirmed on Tuesday that he has withdrawn his offer to discuss funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall as part of a deal with President Trump.
“We’re going to have to start on a new basis and the wall offer is off the table,” Schumer told reporters, saying that the offer was initially “part of a package.”
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The reversal comes after Schumer said he offered to discuss the wall — a key campaign pledge of Trump’s — during a White House meeting on Friday.
“During the meeting, in exchange for strong [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)] protections, I reluctantly put the border wall on the table for the discussion. Even that was not enough to entice the president to finish the deal,” Schumer said from the Senate floor early Saturday.
But Schumer said that the president, while initially seeming interested, refused the agreement.
The Trump administration announced last year that it was ending DACA, an Obama-era program that allows certain immigrants brought to the country illegally as children to work and go to school here.
The immigration fight was at the center of the three-day government shutdown.
Democrats wanted a DACA fix tied to the funding bill, while Republicans argued that the March 5 deadline, set by Trump, was not pressing.
The government reopened after Democrats agreed to a deal with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to take up immigration legislation next month if they can’t reach a deal by Feb. 8 — the end of the current government funding bill.
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