Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) knocked President Trump’s immigration proposal on Thursday and warned that White House advisor Stephen Miller’s involvement meant the plan would fail.
Schumer, speaking from the Senate floor ahead of the White House unveiling, said Miller’s “hands … are all over this plan” and noted the former Senate staffer attended a closed-door GOP lunch along with Trump son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner and Vice President Pence.
{mosads}”He had a watchful eye when other administration officials came into the Republican lunch and talked about it,” Schumer said. “When Stephen Miller … is in the room, it is a surefire failure.”
Schumer didn’t attend the GOP lunch, but he appeared to referring to a Washington Post report that Miller interrupted Kushner “several times” during the closed-door meeting with the Senate Republican caucus.
Miller has long been viewed as an antagonist to bipartisan immigration efforts on Capitol Hill, and has had a hand in some of the most controversial policies coming out of the Trump White House. Before that, while working for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions in the Senate, he fought against the 2013 Gang of Eight immigration bill that died in the GOP-controlled House.
Trump rolled out his new immigration plan on Thursday saying it would make the United States “the pride of our nation and the envy of the world.
Trump described the proposal as overhauling legal immigration to favor high-skilled workers, allocating more money for border security and cracking down on “meritless” asylum claims.