Deal reached on Donald Trump's border wall to avert second government shutdown

Donald Trump today vowed that his Mexico border wall “will be built anyway” after lawmakers agreed a tentative agreement that only provides a quarter of the funding he has demanded.

The deal struck last night between Democrats and Republicans to ease the threat of a second crippling government shutdown includes $1.4 billion (£1.09 billion) for the wall.

That would pay for barrier stretching about 55 miles, which would be built in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. Mr Trump has demanded $5.7 billion for a 215-mile wall.

Despite cross-party agreement, the budget deal to fund America’s government will be doomed without Mr Trump’s support.

Donald Trump's, whose poll numbers were sent tumbling during the government shutdown, at a rally in El Paso on Monday
Getty Images

Speaking at a rally in El Paso, Texas, shortly after news of the deal broke, the president refused to be drawn on whether he would back it.

“They say that progress is being made. Just so you know. Just now, just now,” he said. “I said wait a minute, I gotta take care of my people from Texas. I got to go. I don’t even want to hear about it.”

“Just so you know, we’re building the wall anyway,” he added, saying he would “never sign a bill that forces the mass release of violent criminals”.

He was referring to a sticking point in the negotiations on Capitol Hill over Democrat demands to restrict the number of illegal immigrants being held in US detention centres.

The deal, reached just hours after negotiators admitted they feared a new shutdown was looming, would ensure the government is funded until September, the end of the fiscal year.

“We reached an agreement in principle,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby. “We got an agreement on all of it.”

Republican Senator from Alabama Richard Shelby announced a deal had agreed "in principle" 
EPA

“The spectre of another shutdown this close, what brought us back together I thought tonight was we didn’t want that to happen,” he added, noting that they had until midnight on Friday to find a compromise.

More details are likely to be revealed today, but the bill still needs to be passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the president.

So far details have been revealed by congressional aides under condition of anonymity because the agreement is tentative.

The pact is said to include increases in advanced screening at border entry points, humanitarian aid sought by Democrats and additional customs officers.

Democrats carried more leverage into the talks after besting Mr Trump on the 35-day shutdown but showed compromise to win the president's signature.

The party focused on reducing funding for detention beds to curb what they see as unnecessarily harsh enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Democrats said this would mean the agency would hold fewer detainees than the roughly 49,000 detainees held on February 10, the most recent date figures were available. They claimed the number of beds would drop to 40,520.

But a proposal to cap at 16,500 the number of detainees caught in areas away from the border - a limit Democrats say was aimed at preventing overreach by the agency – was dropped.

Mr Trump met with top advisers in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon to discuss the negotiations.

He softened his rhetoric on the wall but stepped it up when alluding to the detention beds issue.

"We can call it anything. We'll call it barriers, we'll call it whatever they want," Mr Trump said. "But now it turns out not only don't they want to give us money for a wall, they don't want to give us the space to detain murderers, criminals, drug dealers, human smugglers."

A White House official told CNN the government was keeping its options open, including reallocating funds from elsewhere to build the wall.

The previous shutdown sparked by the row over funding border security lasted for a record 35 days from December 22 to January 25 and cost the US an estimated $11 billion (£8.5 billion).

It left more than 800,000 government workers without pay, forced Mr Trump’s State of the Union address to be postponed and sent his poll numbers tumbling.

As support in his own party began to splinter, the president surrendered after the shutdown, agreeing to the current temporary reopening without getting money for the wall.

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