Trump Promotes House Immigration Overhaul, but His Support May Be Too Late

WASHINGTON — With Republican support flagging, President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday and implored the House — in all capital letters — to pass immigration legislation that would toughen border security, fund his wall and offer a path to citizenship for young immigrants in the country illegally known as Dreamers.

“HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL, KNOWN AS GOODLATTE II, IN THEIR AFTERNOON VOTE TODAY, EVEN THOUGH THE DEMS WON’T LET IT PASS IN THE SENATE,” he wrote. “PASSAGE WILL SHOW THAT WE WANT STRONG BORDERS & SECURITY WHILE THE DEMS WANT OPEN BORDERS = CRIME. WIN!”

But coming just days after Trump had told Congress to forget about immigration until after the midterm elections, it was doubtful that his last-minute change of mind could persuade enough Republican lawmakers before an expected vote later Wednesday.

On the eve of the vote, the bill appeared all but certain to be heading toward defeat, in part because of the mixed messages from the president.

“There is still a divide and you could see it in the vote last week and this week there’s probably a little bit more of a divide,” Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House Republican whip, conceded on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning.

The legislation, a compromise between Republican immigration moderates and conservatives, also includes language intended to keep migrant families together when parents are prosecuted for illegally crossing the Southwest border from Mexico.

If the bill fails, Republican lawmakers in the House are expected to turn their attention to stand-alone legislation that would seek to keep families together. But with the Fourth of July approaching and lawmakers close to leaving town for a recess, it was not clear how quickly a narrower measure might move forward. Senators have also been pursuing stand-alone legislation intended to keep families together.

The frustrations in Congress are matched by the confusion in the Trump administration. A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction late Tuesday temporarily stopping the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the border and ordered that all families already separated be reunited within 30 days.

The Justice Department replied with an appeal to Congress.

“Last night’s court decision makes it even more imperative that Congress finally act to give federal law enforcement the ability to simultaneously enforce the law and keep families together,” the department said in a statement Wednesday morning.

“Without this action by Congress, lawlessness at the border will continue, which will only lead to predictable results: more heroin and fentanyl pushed by Mexican cartels plaguing our communities, a surge in MS-13 gang members, and an increase in the number of human trafficking prosecutions,” the Justice Department statement said.

But swift action is not likely.

In the House, despite the painstaking negotiations among Republicans to try to arrive at a broad immigration overhaul that would be acceptable to different ideological factions within their conference, the resulting compromise still ran into trouble with conservatives. It has been derided on the right as “amnesty” for offering a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the country as children.

House Republican leaders twice delayed a vote on the measure last week to give them more time to build support. But by Tuesday, it appeared that their last-ditch efforts had failed to produce any new outpouring of enthusiasm.

Trump has not helped matters.

The president could have been a critical salesman in persuading wavering Republicans to get behind the legislation. Instead, his conflicting messages only added to the discombobulation that Republicans have not been able to escape on the politically delicate subject of immigration.

On Friday, he wrote on Twitter that Republicans in Congress “should stop wasting their time” on immigration legislation until after the midterm elections in November — a message that was directly at odds with the effort in the House to build support for the compromise bill.