(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said he'd welcome another government shutdown if Democrats refuse to meet his demands for an immigration overhaul.
“If we don't change it, let's have a shutdown,” Trump said to law enforcement officials who met with him at the White House to discuss MS-13, a predominantly Latino gang whose members include undocumented immigrants. “We'll do a shutdown, and it's worth it for our country. I'd love to see a shutdown if we don't get this stuff taken care of.”
Representative Barbara Comstock, a Virginia Republican who was at the meeting, told him a shutdown wouldn't be necessary, and that there was bipartisan support for a crackdown on violent gangs.
Trump interrupted her. “We are not getting support of the Democrats,” he said. His comments came as congressional leaders are negotiating a deal on spending legislation to avoid another shutdown.
Those talks have largely excluded the issue of immigration, which was at the heart of a brief shutdown last month. Trump rejected a proposed deal from Democrats that would have protected undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children from deportation, in exchange for some funding for the president's proposed wall on the Mexican border.
The White House has insisted that the legislation also limit legal immigration by restricting people from sponsoring family members to join them in the U.S., and by ending a program that awards visas to people from countries with low rates of migration to the U.S.
To contact the reporters on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net, Jennifer Jacobs in Washington at jjacobs68@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net.
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