Senate Rejects Trump's Immigration Plan

WASHINGTON — In a stern rebuke to President Donald Trump, the Senate on Thursday decisively rejected a White House rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws that would have bolstered border security, placed strict new limits on legal migration and resolved the fate of the “Dreamers.”

The measure by Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, was patterned after one the White House proposed, but the 39-60 vote was 21 votes short of the 60 votes required for the Senate to consider it. Trump had threatened to veto any other approach.

But the rejection of the president’s plan was bipartisan: Democrats refused its get-tough approach to legal immigration, while many conservative Republicans opposed its pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

What happens now in the Senate immigration debate is unclear. Before the vote on the White House plan, senators turned away two more modest measures to protect young immigrants known as Dreamers. Neither the plan drafted by a broad group of centrists nor one written by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Chris Coons, D-Del., secured 60 votes.

The McCain-Coons measure received 52 votes. The centrist measure won 54.

The White House-backed measure would have severely limited “chain migration,” more commonly known as family-based immigration, and would have ended the diversity visa lottery program, two priorities of the president that are anathema to Democrats.

It would also have provided $25 billion for the border wall the president has proposed building along the southern border, as well as a path to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants who were brought to this country as children.

An estimated 690,000 of these young immigrants are protected from deportation by an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and about 1.1 million more are eligible. But Trump has rescinded the initiative, which is set to expire March 5.

Trump had said the White House-backed measure was the only one he would sign.

Grassley grew emotional with reporters Wednesday as he appealed to Democrats to support it.

“Here’s an opportunity to do something,” Grassley told reporters Wednesday. “We shouldn’t miss this opportunity. We’ve got something that ought to get bipartisan support in the Senate. It’s got the best chance of getting through the House of Representatives and it’s the only one that you hear talked about that the president will sign.”

The White House had worked vigorously to bring down every other approach. In a conference call with reporters just before voting began, a senior White House official lashed out at Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a key sponsor of an alternative measure. Speaking only on the condition of anonymity despite repeated requests to be on the record, the official accused Graham of attacking Homeland Security officials and standing in the way of needed immigration changes.

“Senator Graham has been an obstacle for those reforms,” the official said. He accused Graham of misleading other senators, including Democrats, about the damage the proposal will do. He said Democrats should not let “Lindsey Graham dictate what Democrat senators ought to do.”

On Capitol Hill, Graham punched back at Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and immigration hard-liner. “As long as the president allows Steve Miller and others to run the show down there, we’re never going to get anywhere,” he said.

The comments by the White House official followed a series of extraordinary actions to try to defeat Graham’s bipartisan measure. A fact sheet issued by the Department of Homeland Security assailed the proposal, injecting the enforcement agency into the middle of a partisan legislative fight.