AMNESTY WATCH: Lindsey Graham’s Amnesty-for-Migration-Fix Swap Gets Boost from Donald Trump’s Deportation Delay

President Donald Trump’s decision to delay a small-scale deportation operation has created an opening for Sen. Lindsey Graham’s push to swap an amnesty for border reforms, say pro-immigration reformers.

Graham already “is negotiating with [Democratic Sen. Richard] Durbin — [and] he’s not pulling the Republicans together” to present a united front, said Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

On June 19, for example, Graham told Democratic Senators at a committee meeting that he is willing to trade an amnesty to get a border fixes. “I am willing to deal with DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] … We will take a couple of weeks to see if we can find a compromise,” he said.

Trump announced the enforcement delay on Sunday afternoon, amid rising efforts by Democrats to block border reforms or even the implementation of judges’ deportation orders.

At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border. If not, Deportations start!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2019

“At the request of Democrats, I have delayed the Illegal Immigration Removal Process (Deportation) for two weeks to see if the Democrats and Republicans can get together and work out a solution to the Asylum and Loophole problems at the Southern Border,” Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon. “If not, Deportations start!”

The delay was likely forced by top-level leaks of the deportation efforts, say reformers. Once the details were leaked, officials recognized that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) teams could face difficulties in finding the migrants who have been told by judges to go home. Also, officials worried that the ICE teams would be blocked by groups of pro-migration activists.

But Trump’s tweet widens the danger that Graham and other pro-migration GOP Senators could work with Democrats to push through an amnesty-for-partial-reform deal, said Vaughan. “Lindsey Graham has convinced the president that he needs a couple of weeks to pull together a deal on the asylum reforms with amnesty as the trade-off … [although] it is not clear if the President has drunk the kool-aid or has decided to give Lindsey Graham some working room,” she said.

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