President Trump signaled last week that he is open to working with Democrats on immigration, after two years of carrying out aggressive immigration enforcement and deportation policies across the country.
Days after the midterm election losses, Trump acknowledged during an interview on 60 Minutes filmed on Friday that his Administration's mass deportation policies might be "too tough." "Let the people that are here, and in some cases, here for 10 and 15 years—work a deal for them," Trump says.
The offer by Trump follows a midterm election in which his Administration policies prompted a national backlash that strategists say played a role in delivering to Democrats one of their best election showings in decades. On Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin echoed Trump's conciliatory remarks, telling reporters at a conference in Maryland that Trump has encouraged him to work with Democrats who have reached out about collaborating on immigration reform in the new Congress.
The prospects of Trump agreeing to an immigration deal drew wariness from both parties. Democrats were especially circumspect at Trump's gentler tone days after tapping Stephen Miller, the architect of the Administration's immigration agenda, as his new White House Chief of Staff.
"Miller…is probably extremely unlikely to advise the president to sign a bad immigration bill or a sweeping amnesty," says Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and a resident fellow at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies.
The crop of newly elected Democrats to Congress include many who campaigned against Trump's immigration policies, specifically raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Democratic Socialist Claire Valdez, who just won a House seat in New York representing part of Brooklyn, said at a press conference on Sunday that congressional Democrats "have a mandate" to abolish ICE.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Leader who is on track to be the next Speaker of the House, said in a CBS interview on Monday that any potential deal with Trump should start with restoring protections for recipients for programs like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which covers undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children, and Temporary Protective Status (TPS), which allowed immigrants who sought refuge from natural disasters or armed conflicts to stay and work in the U.S.
"We can begin by moving in the House, and ultimately in the Senate, the Dream and Promise Act in order to restore protection for DACA recipients and TPS recipients. And that should be a foundation for more broader work that can be done together," Jeffries explained, adding that reforming ICE and ending mass deportation would also be a part of the discussion.
It's unclear how many Republicans would work on any immigration deal in the new Congress. The House Freedom Caucus, which represents a bloc of ultra conservative lawmakers in Congress, posted on Monday that it rejected any potential efforts to offer amnesty to undocumented immigrants.
Mullin stressed that the administration would not support a blanket amnesty program, but was open to movement on programs that cover hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the country such as DACA. "If we want to have an immigration reform where we can look at DACA, and figure out a way that these individuals can become, maybe, legal permanent citizens…that'll be up to Congress to do that. I'll be open to talk to anything," Mullin said, according to multiple outlets.
Yet, as one source in Congress familiar with the immigration policy discussions tells TIME, if Trump is serious about working with Democrats on immigration, he could prove it by slowing down or even pausing deportations across the country. In the meantime, his comments may be seen by many as little more than an empty gesture.
"It doesn't seem like there is anything to work with him on at the moment but that may change next year," the source adds.
Trump's history with immigration reform
This isn't the first time Trump expressed openness to some immigration reforms.
During his State of the Union address in 2018, Trump proposed a framework to congressional Republicans to pass legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 1.8 million people eligible for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. But the measure was viewed as a half-hearted measure by Trump, who acknowledged it lacked the votes in the Senate. The legislation ultimately failed to pass the House, with 112 Republican members joining all House Democrats in opposing the bill.
The last time that a comprehensive immigration reform bill was taken seriously by both chambers of Congress was in 2013, during Obama's second term, according to Arthur. That measure would have allowed undocumented immigrants already in the U.S. to stay in the country while waiting to apply for a green card. The bill was ultimately killed in the House by far-right Republicans led by then-Rep. Jeff Sessions and his chief of staff, who was the same Stephen Miller Trump just promoted to the same role in his White House.
