President Trump reportedly plans to extend his six-month deadline for ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, Sen. James Lankford said at a town hall event in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“The president’s comment to me was that, ‘We put a six-month deadline out there. Let’s work it out. If we can’t get it worked out in six months, we’ll give it some more time, but we’ve got to get this worked out legislatively,’ he said.
Trump announced his decision to end DACA in September, but gave a six-month window for Congress to come up with a legislative solution.
He did hint at the time, however, that the deadline was somewhat flexible.
“Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can't, I will revisit this issue!” he tweeted last month.
The president acknowledged the difficulty of the DACA decision during his interview this week with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, but also noted that any deal over the program would need to include border security measures.
“A lot of these people are in the military, they have jobs, they have this, that — it's a very — I fully understand it,” Trump said. “But if we're going to do something, we have to get something in return. And what I want is tremendous border regulation, I want the wall, and we're going to get other things. And we're going to see if we can work something out. Now, whether or not we do, I don't know. But it would be wonderful to solve the DACA problem.”
Last week, Trump released a list of immigration demands he wants met in exchange for a deal on DACA, including a crackdown on sanctuary cities, thousands more Customs and Border Patrol agents, a reduction in the number of incoming refugees, and a merit-based system that limits chain migration.
Democrats said many of the reforms are completely out of question, however.
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