It feels like Washington is hurtling toward a breaking point on immigration this week.
President Trump is taking intense criticism from high-profile conservatives for his administration's policy of separating families at the border.
And this week is likely Congress's last realistic chance before the midterms to take action on immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. House Republicans will vote this week on two immigration bills after an uprising from moderate Republicans to protect those dreamers from deportation.
All this means that by the end of this week, we could have a clearer understanding of three big immigration policy fights right now:
- Will Trump's administration feel pressured enough to end its policy of separating families at the border?
- Will Congress protect dreamers from deportation before it's too late?
- Will Trump get funding he so desperately wants to start building his border wall, or will he risk a government shut down in the fall over this?
Here's what to watch day-by-day this week:
Monday afternoon: Trump meets with two key Republican senators on how to fund his border wall. He wants some $2 billion committed to the wall by this fall, though the entire project is estimated to cost 10 times more than that.
Congress may not be able to get even the initial down payment to him. Democrats have been split on whether to okay billions for the wall, and the ones who agreed to it want dreamers to become citizens in exchange. But Trump considers funding the wall a baseline job Congress should do for him and is increasingly unwilling to negotiate on it. He almost vetoed a spending bill and shut down the government this spring because the bill didn't have money for his wall.
What to watch for: Whether the border wall becomes a negotiating chip in ending family separations at the border. Funding the wall and how to deal with people at the border are technically two separate legislative debates right now, but Trump could demand cash now and tangle the two.
Speaking of . . .
Tuesday night: Trump meets with House Republicans to talk about their immigration bills.
There are two bills House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) is allowing a vote on.
One is supported by hard-line conservatives and is not expected to pass. Authored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), it would drastically cut legal immigration like family-based immigration and a visa lottery.
The second is a compromise bill forged by Ryan. It is also pretty conservative, but it could get enough support from moderate Republicans to come close to passing the House because it also offers a path to citizenship for dreamers.
What to watch for: Does Trump clarify he'll support the dreamer-citizenship bill if it somehow passed the House (a big if), passes the Senate (a bigger if) and made it to his desk? And will Republicans believe what he tells them?
As usual on immigration, Trump doesn't seem to know what he wants. He sometimes seems to change his mind on an hourly basis, and these bills are no different.
On Friday morning, he trashed the more moderate bill in an interview with Fox News, saying he wouldn't sign it into law. By Friday night, his staff had walked that back and indicated he'd sign it.
So now, GOP lawmakers who had been sticking their necks out for a compromise don't really know what to believe. To put it bluntly, at this point they don't trust what Trump tells them, so Trump will have some selling to do to give the moderate bill — which has the best chance of passing the House — a boost.
This meeting is by far the most important development on immigration this week.
“I'm watching 100 percent the president because nothing is going to happen without his approval,” said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy expert with the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
Later this week: The House votes on the two GOP-immigration bills. It's unclear whether either will have the votes to pass.
Most Democrats don't support either piece of legislation, and conservative Republicans don't support the more moderate one (because it has a path to citizenship for dreamers), and moderate Republicans don't want to drastically cut legal immigration.
Even if something did pass the House, Democrats in the Senate will almost certainly block anything that cuts legal immigration. A number of Republicans are opposed to that, too.
Also later this week: Senate Republicans wait to hear from the Trump administration on whether they are separating families at the border who are asking for asylum, not just those crossing illegally. GOP Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Susan Collins (Maine) sent a letter to the Homeland Security chief asking why they've read news reports that parents who cross with children asking for asylum are separated when she has testified that doesn't happen.
“These accounts and others like them concern us,” they wrote.
What to watch for: If the administration does acknowledge it's separating people who say they are fleeing violence and oppression in their home countries, it could spur even more opposition in conservative ranks to Trump's policy — and put more pressure on him to end it.
Also sometime this week: Senate Democrats are trying to build support for their bill to end family separations.
What to watch for: Republicans aren't expected to support this bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), mostly because they don't want to get into a direct conflict with Trump on a touchy subject. But Senate Democrats have shown a remarkable amount of unity on ending family separations. Could that push Senate Republicans to pressure Trump to stop his most controversial border policy yet?