Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., heads to the chamber with fellow Democrats for a procedural vote aimed at reopening the government, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 22, 2018. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Republished January 23, 2018 - 3:51 PM
Original Publication Date January 23, 2018 - 1:16 PM
WASHINGTON - The Latest on immigration legislation in Congress (all times local):
6:50 p.m.
The Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, is pulling back an offer of $25 billion for President Donald Trump's southern border wall.
The turnaround comes as lawmakers scramble to make a deal to protect from deportation 700,000 or more young immigrants in the country illegally since childhood.
Schumer had made the offer to head off a government shutdown, but his party's liberal activist base has criticized the New York Democrat and others for not getting more concrete promises on immigration.
The shutdown battle complicated the already difficult search for an immigration pact. GOP hard-liners appear emboldened, while Democrats are absorbing withering criticism from progressives. Neither development seems likely to push the combatants toward the compromises needed to produce a bill that can pass the House and the Senate.
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4 p.m.
President Donald Trump is rejecting a proposed bipartisan immigration bill.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says the legislation brought forth by Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jeff Flake of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois is "unacceptable" to Trump.
Sanders adds that the legislation should be "declared dead on arrival" and does not meet White House requirements on border security.
The failure to reach an immigration deal earlier this month was the driving force behind the recent, brief federal government shutdown.
The White House had indicated that it would not re-open negotiations on immigration until the shutdown ended.
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1:20 p.m.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer has taken back his offer of billions of dollars for President Donald Trump's long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Schumer spokesman Matt House says Schumer's office notified the White House that Friday's offer to combine wall funding with legal protections for 700,000 younger immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. Trump had rejected the offer.
Senate Democrats angered their liberal, activist political base Monday by yielding on GOP demands to reopen the government without an immigration deal.
President Donald Trump tweeted Tuesday "nobody knows" whether a deal can be achieved.
News from © The Associated Press, 2018