Trump announced last week that he is ready to work with Democrats on immigration reforms, following two years of implementing strict immigration policies and deporting immigrants across the country.
Trump's change of tone after the midterm elections
Days after the defeat in the midterm elections, Trump acknowledged in an interview that the policies of mass deportation of immigrants may have been "very harsh." He said, "Let’s make a deal for those who are here, and in some cases, have been here for 10 and 15 years."
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This proposal from Trump comes after elections in which his administration's policies have sparked a national backlash and given Democrats one of their best electoral results in decades. In this context, Mark Wayne Mullen, the Secretary of Homeland Security, also told reporters at a conference in Maryland that Trump has encouraged him to work with Democrats who have reached out for collaboration on immigration reforms.
Concerns from both parties about an immigration deal
However, the prospect of Trump's immigration reform deal has been met with caution from both parties. Democrats are particularly scrutinizing Trump's softer tone after the appointment of Stephen Miller, the architect of his administration's immigration policies, as the new White House chief.
Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge, said, "Miller is unlikely to encourage the President to sign a bad immigration bill or a blanket amnesty." Additionally, new Democratic representatives in Congress include individuals who campaigned against Trump's immigration policies. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialist representative from New York, stated that Congressional Democrats have "an agenda" to abolish ICE.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, also said in an interview that any potential agreement with Trump should begin with restoring protections related to programs like DACA. He emphasized that reforming ICE and ending mass deportations would also be part of this discussion.
While it remains unclear how many Republicans in the new Congress are willing to collaborate on any immigration deal, Mullen emphasized that the administration will not support a general amnesty program but is interested in discussing programs that include hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the country.
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