WASHINGTON, DC – FWD.us President Todd Schulte issued the following statement today on the government shutdown:

“This shutdown is harmful, unnecessary political theater. Given the President’s own actions, it isn’t going to end with The Wall being built, and it certainly isn’t going to fix our broken immigration system or take meaningful steps to continue to increase border security. In the last 24 hours, the President followed in the steps of many of his allies in an attempt to re-write history.

Here are the facts

1. The President terminated DACA (the courts later found the manner in which he did so to be illegal) and continues to take every action possible to get the Supreme Court to take the case and kill the program.
2. The President had at least 4 bipartisan deals, and
3. At each instance, the President, at the urging of Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, and General Kelly killed these deals–and his chances for funding for The Wall–because they did not include massive cuts to legal immigration. The President had the big deal – but he blinked.

So, every time someone claims that building a border wall is an imperative worth putting people out of work over the holidays, they need to be asked the following questions:

1. Why did the White House reject four different bipartisan solutions that would have actually provided funding to build the wall?
2. Is it because deporting Dreamers or slashing legal immigration are bigger priorities to the President and his advisors than border security?

The new Congress needs to get to work on day one to do exactly that, starting by dealing with the urgent crisis facing Dreamers and TPS holders who have been contributing to the United States for decades. Because of actions of the Trump Administration, more than one million people who are legally living and working across our nation are at risk of being ripped out of their jobs and communities. Congress needs to get to work.”