Ohio’s two U.S. senators say Congress should act on DACA, now that the Trump administration announced it would end the program shielding undocumented young people from deportation. Still up in the air is how both parties might strike a deal.
Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown supports the DREAM Act, which would open a path to citizenship for people brought to the country unlawfully as children.
Asked on a call with reporters if he’d back money for a border wall in exchange, Brown said “nothing is a non-starter to solve this problem.” But he said the wall “doesn’t make sense,” especially while the government is focused on funding hurricane recovery efforts.
“I can’t imagine the president of the United States is going to demand billions and billions of dollars to build a wall, maybe shut the government down over that,” Brown said.
Republican Sen. Rob Portman said in a prepared statement that he supports “bipartisan efforts to find a permanent solution that will allow those in the DACA program to stay here and continue to contribute to our society.”
In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Portman said he’d like to combine it with additional immigration enforcement.
“I personally would like to see us have a stronger workplace enforcement program in place, that would take the e-verify and be sure that we can, in fact, verify people’s documents,” Portman said.
In a tweet, President Trump said if Congress doesn’t act, he will “revisit this issue.”
Copyright 2021 90.3 WCPN ideastream. To see more, visit 90.3 WCPN ideastream. 9(MDA5NTM4MTIyMDE0MTg3NDc2MTVlZjdmNQ001))
