Republican officials were left unsatisfied with answers from Jared Kushner to some of their questions regarding the White House’s immigration plan, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
While Republican senators publicly applauded the administration’s proposal to move the immigration system toward one that prioritizes highly skilled workers, GOP officials told the Post that Kushner did not have answers to some of their questions and that Stephen Miller, an immigration hawk and another senior adviser, had to step in at times.
{mosads}“He’s in his own little world,” one source familiar with the discussion in the meeting told the Post. “He didn’t give many details about what was in [his plan]. … And there were a number of instances where people had to step in and answer questions because he couldn’t.”
A senior White House official disputed the Republican officials’ characterization, saying that Kushner, Miller and senior economic adviser Kevin Hassett presented the plan as a team.
“This is a detailed proposal that we can unify Republicans around,” the official told the Post. “That gives us a much stronger position to then discuss other things.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
A Kushner ally later slammed the Post story as “nonsense” and one of the authors of the piece said a senior administration official said the report had “kind of a bitchy tone.”
At one point during Tuesday’s meeting Kushner reportedly confounded the Republican senators by saying that his plan would not address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects certain immigrants who came to the country illegally as children and would be necessary for attracting support from Democrats.
“I am concerned about the fate of the DACA young people, and they cannot be excluded from any immigration package,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said.
Kushner also left senators wondering what he meant when he said the plan would prioritize unifying immigrant families, including mothers and children. He also reportedly did not have an answer when asked how his proposition would deal with undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.
Kushner said in the meeting that his proposal would create a merit-based immigration system and that immigrants would have to pass a civics test before entering the country, adding that the president would soon give a speech on the issue.