That “big beautiful wall” won’t exactly be a wall at all, Sen. Lankford (R-OK) told The Hill Thursday.
Instead, the ‘border wall’ is more of a figurative statement for beefed-up border security. The Wall became a weighty bargaining chip in the DACA legalization negotiations with Trump demanding its construction in exchange for the codification of President Obama’s extra-legal DACA program, among other immigration program changes.
From The Hill:
President Trump on Thursday laid out his demands for an immigration deal to Republican senators, making clear he doesn’t expect Congress to build a physical 2,200-mile concrete wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.Instead, the president wants Congress to increase security along the border by ratcheting up patrols, surveillance and fencing, in return for relief for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients in an immigration deal that could be tied to the 2018 spending bill. “People want to paint that it’s some 2,000-mile long, 30-foot-high wall of concrete. That’s not what he means and not what he tries to say,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who met with Trump at the White House Thursday.“There’s going to be border fencing in some areas, there’s going to be vehicular barricades, there’s going to be technology, there’s going to be greater manpower in some areas,” he added.Lankford said Trump has been clear “in private.”Government funding runs out on Jan. 19, and Congress has until March 5 to come up with a solution to protect “Dreamers” from deportation.
A similar deal tanked immigration negotiations in 2014. Republicans offered a sweet border enhancement package, honing in on the exact priorities recently outlined by Sen. Lankford, only to be scuttled by Democrats and the House Freedom Caucus.
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