Tillis predicts immigration deal before March deadline

Trump wants to pair beefed up border security, including his long-promised wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, with a replacement for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump last fall rescinded DACA, an Obama-era program that allows people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to work and study in the country, and permits shielding program participants from deportation start expiring on March 5.

"We owe it to [DACA participants] to solve the problem, and we owe it to the American people to secure the border," Tillis said in an interview with WRAL News.

At the halfway point of his six-year term in the Senate, Tillis also reflected on what he has accomplished over the last three years, such as working on a tax overhaul signed into law last month.

While noting that legislation moves more quickly through the Republican-controlled Congress since Trump succeeded Democratic President Barack Obama last year, he said a number of bills have always cleared the Senate with bipartisan consent that the public never hears about.

"It's a people business," he said, noting that he even works closely with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, an outspoken, liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, on veterans issues.

"If you would have told me three years ago that I'd build a good working relationship with Elizabeth Warren, I'd have told you, 'Not likely,'" he said.

Tillis said he is most proud of the 12,000 constituent calls his 50-person staff has been able to address over three years and the fact that they go out of their way trying to find ways to help North Carolina residents solve issues they're having with government agencies.

"I'm not up in the U.S. Senate just to have the title of senator. I'm up here to produce results," he said. "What defines me as a U.S. senator is somebody who's producing results, not somebody who happened to win an election."