House conservatives are crafting new standalone immigration bill that would roll back family-separation policy WITHOUT paying for Trump's wall – as a backup in case White House battle with Congress doesn't cool off

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Responding to national outrage over the Trump administration's 'zero-tolerance' policy at the border, a conservative lawmaker on Tuesday said that a faction of House Republicans would present a stand-alone immigration bill that addresses family separation.

Rep. Mark Meadows said conservatives in the House had approached leadership with proposal, as well as the Trump administration.

'If one of the two bills that we're going to be discussing today later on Capitol Hill...if they don't gain the votes to get to 218 and actually have a chance of becoming law, this becomes a back-up proposal,' Meadows, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said. 

Meadows said his caucus worked over the weekend to come up with a bill that is 77 pages long that will be introduced on the floor this afternoon.

'We're reaching out to some of our Democrat colleagues to see if they can support us in this effort, and have it as a back up,' he said.

Responding to national outrage over the Trump administration's 'zero-tolerance' policy at the border, conservatives on Tuesday said they would present a stand-alone immigration bill that addresses family separation

It was not immediately clear how the stand-alone bill plans to deal with family separation.

A summary provided by Meadow's office said it clarifies existing guidelines by 'ensuring that accompanied minors of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border are not separated from their parent or legal guardian' while in DHS custody.

'The bill will ensure the safe and expeditious return to the unaccompanied child’s home country, unless the child has a legitimate asylum claim,' the statement said.

It also 'increases multiple enforcement mechanisms' to 'better prevent those seeking to take advantage of the asylum system' and 'targets asylum fraud by adjusting the “credible fear standard” for enforcement officers.'

Illegal immigrants will be barred from entry 'if they are found to knowingly make a false or frivolous application for asylum,' the description provided by Meadows' office states.

'This will cut down on attempts to use the asylum system to illegally enter the U.S.,' the summary says. 'Furthermore, it requires dangerous criminal aliens, subject to final orders of removal, to remain in detention until they are physically removed from the U.S.'

Meadows' bill will also 'allow for alien gang members, alien gang associates, and aliens who participate in gang-related activities to be detained and removed by the DHS, cutting down on the issue of violent crime,' a top concern of the president's. 

The White House did not have an immediate response to Meadows' proposal or a similar one that was being introduced by GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in the U.S. Senate.

'That's hypothetical. We're looking at the legislation now. We're pleased that Congress is coming forward with solutions that we've asked for,' Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short told reporters at the White House.  

Pressed to say whether the president would end the zero tolerance policy without comprehensive immigration reform in the same package, Short replied, 'I’m not gonna answer a hypothetical.' 

Short said the White House would prefer legislation that provides additional judges 'so that we can adjudicate these cases faster' and addresses a court order known as the Flores settlement so that Homeland Security has the 'ability to keep parents and children together as they wait for that adjudication.'  

'We’re gonna be looking at those independently,' he said of Cruz's and Meadows' legislative proposals.

Meadows would not say if he was meeting with the president at the White House, or someone else, during his own conversation with reporters this morning in front of the White House.

'Really at this point, it's more a legislative action,' the lawmaker told reporters from the White House drive. 'I think the administration has said that. It's up to Congress to act on this particular thing.' 

A senior GOP leadership aide told DailyMail.com after the lawmaker's trip across town, 'It would be a little early to weigh in on the third option.'  

A Democratic lawmaker involved in the process told DailyMail.com that the minority would not support the stand-alone bill if it makes indefinite detention for families part of the process or speeds up deportations. 

That's the gist of a measure in a compromise bill that's being pushed in the House that also includes the president's other immigration priorities.

'They can't pass anything without them having some sort of enforcement mechanism,' the person said of Meadows' proposal. 'They've spun themselves into such a crazy narrative that they have to be very careful.'

The White House position on Monday afternoon was that Democrats should join Republicans in passing legislation that restructures the entire immigration system, making permanent entry to the country merit and skills based and doing away with a lottery.

Democrats will not back that agenda, the lawmaker said, in response to to charges from the administration that the opposing party is playing politics and using illegal children as pawns.

'We're not naive, and we realize that once we give into his dictatorial instincts, we realize he's only going to move the goal post,' the Democratic lawmaker fired back.

This evening Trump is making a trek to Capitol Hill to deliver marching orders on immigration to Republicans in Congress. 

GOP leaders expect to bring two pieces of legislation - one that's lockstep with Trump's desired changes and one that's being presented as a compromise - to the floor later this week, likely on Thursday.

Trump backs both, the White House said of the two legislative initiatives, and would like to see an end to family separation. The second bill, the more moderate of the two, was being designed on Monday to allow parents the option to keep their children. 

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders indicated Monday that the president would not support legislation narrowly-tailored to family separation. 

Sanders said Trump 'doesn't just want to see a Band-Aid put on this' and is 'tired of administrations claiming that they want to help the system and then just kicking the can down the road' as it pertains to border security.  

The White House spokeswoman said that Trump wants to resolve other pressing issues, too, like violence at the hands of illegal immigrant gangs.

'There have been a number of individuals that are permanently separated from their families due to the illegal aliens that have come across this border and murdered and killed American citizens,' she told DailyMail.com. 'Where is the outrage over that separation? 

'We want to fix the whole thing. We don't want to just tinker with one part of it. This is a broken system, and we've got to quit ignoring it. Just ignoring the rule doesn't fix it, and that's what this administration is actually trying to do. '

President Trump demanded in tweets on Tuesday morning that Congress pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

'Now is the best opportunity ever for Congress to change the ridiculous and obsolete laws on immigration. Get it done, always keeping in mind that we must have strong border security.'

In another message he laid blame at the feet of the opposing party, saying, 'Democrats are the problem. They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our Country, like MS-13. 

'They can’t win on their terrible policies,' he contended, 'so they view them as potential voters!' 

President Trump said Monday that he's implementing strict immigration policies because he doesn't want the United States to end up like Europe

As his administration came under siege for adopting a zero tolerance position, Trump said Monday that the government is tightening the screws because he doesn't want the United States to end up like Europe.

'The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. Won't be,' he charged in fiery remarks at a White House event.

'You look at what's happening in Europe. You look at what's happening in other places. We can't allow that to happen to the United States. Not on my watch.'

The president delved without warning into a heated argument over immigration that his administration has been waging with Democrats at a signing ceremony for his space policy initiative.

'Immigration is the fault [of Democrats], and all of the problems that we're having, 'cause we cannot get them to sign legislation. We cannot get them even to the negotiating table. And I say it's very strongly the Democrats' fault,' he said at the East Room event. 'They're obstructionists, and they are obstructing.'

The president called on Democrats during the riff to work with Republicans in Congress to pass new rules to govern the nation's immigration system.

'If the Democrats would sit down, instead of obstructing, we could have something done very quickly - good for the children, good for the country good for the world,' he asserted. 'It could take place quickly. We could have an immigration bill. We could have child separation [ended].' 

Instead, the president contended, 'We're stuck with these horrible laws. They're horrible laws. What's happening is so sad. Is so sad. And it can be taken care of quickly, beautifully, and we'll have safety.' 

'Nobody has such sad, such bad, and actually in many cases such horrible and tough. You see about child separation. You see what's going on there,' he said, bringing up a policy Democrats have been assailing his administration for adopting.

Trump suggested the United States' could bolster its credentials as leader of the free world by passing merit-based immigration laws that put a premium on high-skilled workers and lock down America's porous borders

'The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. Won't be,' he charged  later in fiery remarks at a White House event.

Trump, justifying the policy, said, 'Just remember, a country without borders, is not a country at all.

'We have to take care of our people,' he added. 'You take a look at the death and the destruction that's been caused by people coming into this country without going through a process.'

The president conflated the diversity visa lottery that awards entry to vetted applicants at random with people who he said 'snuck across' the border to enter the country unlawfully.

'They could be murderers and thieves and so much else,' he asserted. 'So we want a safe country, and it starts with the borders, and that's the way it is.'

As the applause in the room died down, the president said, before returning to the topic at hand, that Democrats have but one choice to end the family separation: join Republicans in passing legislation that restructures the immigration system the way he's demanding.

'Everybody wants to do it. We want to do it more than they do,' he said of immigration reform. [If they come to the table, instead of playing politics, we can do it very, very quickly.' 

The White House spent most of Monday sparring with Democrats who have been accusing the Trump administration of exploiting migrant families.

Each side condemned the other for using children as 'pawns' in a raging illegal immigration debate.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said from the White House podium that Democrats bludgeoning the administration for its 'zero tolerance' policy at the border are acting 'cowardly' and could change federal immigration law if they wanted to.

Nielsen argued that DHS was just doing its job in enforcing a Trump administration policy that has led more than 2,000 children to be separated from their parents or guardians in the last six weeks.

'If an American were to commit a crime anywhere in the United States,' she told a room full of reporters, 'they would go to jail and they would be separated from their family.'

Nielsen said, 'This is not a controversial idea.'

The president's pitch: ''This could really be something very special. It could be something. Maybe even for the world to watch. Just like they're watching our great economy, how it's soaring, they could watch this'

A view of inside U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention facility shows detainees inside fenced areas at Rio Grande Valley Centralized Processing Center in Rio Grande City, Texas, U.S., June 17, 2018. Picture taken on June 17, 2018

Immigrants wait to head to a Catholic Charities relief center after being dropped off at a bus station shortly after release from detention through "catch and release" immigration policy on June 17, 2018 in McAllen, Texas. The man said he was separated from his son while in detention. "Catch and release" is a protocol under which people detained by US authorities as unlawful immigrants can be released while they wait for a hearing

Democrats had been hammering the administration for days, charging DHS officials with everything from 'using' children as bargaining chips to accusing them of 'child abuse.' 

President Trump said Monday, as he attempted to gain the upper hand, that children are 'being used by some of the worst criminals on earth as a means to enter our country.'

Trump said in tweets that he'd also like to know where Democratic outrage is for American families who are being permanently separated by murderous, illegal immigrant gangsters.

'Why don’t the Democrats give us the votes to fix the world’s worst immigration laws? Where is the outcry for the killings and crime being caused by gangs and thugs, including MS-13, coming into our country illegally?' he said in a Monday morning rant. 

A rotating cast of Trump administration officials appeared on national news networks to buttress the president's arguments and assail Democrats using family separation as a cudgel against the Republicans' in their war over illegal immigration.

Hogan Gidley, a deputy spokesman for the president, appeared on Fox News on Monday and asserted that Democrats are 'playing politics with people's lives. They're doing it on the backs of children. It's absolutely grotesque.' 

'All they want to do is go down and grandstand and try to use this to political gain to try and get reelected in a few years, and it's grotesque,' he told reporters as he walked back inside the White House to his office. 'We can fix it right now, we can protect our citizens, but more important protect all the children around the world who are trying to come here.' 

The Trump spokesman claimed that migrant families 'separate themselves a lot of times,' sending their children with coyotes promising to bring them across the border for a hefty price.

'It's a deplorable situation, we've gotta fix it. And Congress could do it tomorrow, if you close the loopholes, the situation's solved,' Gidley stated. 

The president delved without warning into a heated argument over immigration that his administration has been waging with Democrats at a signing ceremony for his space policy initiative

White House Director of Strategic of Communications Mercede Schlapp said on Fox that Democrats are 'using children as political pawns' and are essentially 'advocating for the smugglers who are bringing these children over' the border.

'We have our hands tied and the smugglers have the advantage,' she said, insisting that MS-13 gang members are bringing over small children as leverage.

Nielsen also claimed Monday that the crisis of illegal immigrant children being housed separately from the adults who bring them across the border is, in part, fueled by men and women making fraudulent asylum claims with children who aren't theirs.

'From October 2017 to this February, we have seen a staggering 315 per cent increase in illegal aliens fraudulently using children to pose as family units to gain entry into the country,' she told the annual National Association of Sheriffs meeting in New Orleans.

'This must stop. All this does is put the children at risk,' the DHS chief added. 'We do not have the luxury of pretending that all individuals coming to this country as a family unit are in fact a family.'

'We have to do our job. We will not apologize for doing our job.'  

A DHS official told DailyMail.com that in the first five months of fiscal year 2018, DHS found 191 cases of fraud compared to 46 cases in all of fiscal year 2017. 

Before the administration's zero tolerance policy, the official explained, traffickers knew that by bringing over a child they were likely to be released directly into the country and began taking advantage of the system.

The increase in fraudulent cases, by the government's numbers, was steep - but it counted for relatively small portion of immigrant children entering the country illegally with adults over the same time period.

DHS said that the roughly 1,800 separations from guardians or parents occurred from October through February. Fraudulent cases, therefore, accounted for roughly 11 percent of those separations.

The 'zero-tolerance' border security policy adopted in April by the Trump administration was at the center of a flare up on Sunday in the U.S. as Democrats took aim at Republicans celebrating Father's Day by sharing photos of their families on the Internet.

Democratic lawmakers on Sunday said that they would fight the 'evil' separation of children from their parents at the border while accusing the Trump administration of 'using the grief, the tears, the pain of these kids as mortar to build their wall.' 

'They call it "zero tolerance," but a better name for it is zero humanity, and there's zero logic to this policy,' Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley said during a trip to the Mexican border.

Rep. Adam Schiff told NBC, 'It's an effort to extort a bill to their liking in the Congress. 

'It's, I think, deeply unethical, and by the President’s making these provable falsehoods about what’s required, the party adopting that has become, the GOP has become the party of lies,' the Democratic congressman stated.

The Trump administration says that 'open border' policies have led to a surge in illegal immigration that has forced the administration to treat all migrants unlawfully crossing the Untied States' southern border as criminals. 

'It is a crime to enter this country illegally. So if [Democrats] don’t like that law, they should change it,' Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, charged on Meet the Press on Sunday. 'Do you want the child in jail? As opposed to a facility?'    

Immigrants are dropped off at a bus station shortly after being released from detention through "catch and release" immigration policy on June 17, 2018 in McAllen, Texas

Conway said that President Trump wants to double the number of family detention centers as part of his 70-point immigration plan that Congress has not passed, in order to keep more families together. 

Gidley on Monday charged, 'There is a separation that occurs because the law exists that way. It is a farce to believe you can keep them together. ... Democrats say you can't detain them. So if you can't detain them, you can't deport them, you have to release them into the interior of the country. It's a complete false choice but it can be so simply if would close these loopholes.'

The White House spokesman forcefully argued that the government has a responsibility to detain undocumented immigrants in order to cut down on crime. 

'And I understand the Democrats are upset about temporary separation of families who come here illegally, ' he acknowledged. 'Where is the outcry for the permanent separation when one of these people come to the country, commit a crime, kill an American citizen either with their own hand or via drugs they distribute, no one comes to their defense?'

'The permanent separation is the biggest abomination, and no Democrat's coming out decrying that at all,' Gidley charged on Fox.  

Democratic lawmakers touring border facilitates on Sunday said that the Trump administration was behaving immorally and unethically in order to get the president's desired changes to border security. 

Merkley accused Republicans of 'hurting kids to get legislative leverage is unacceptable. It is evil.'

Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee said Trump 'is not telling the truth' about the law as written.

'There is no law, there is no policy that has allowed him to snatch children away from their families,' she said. 'I can assure you we'll be fighting to the end to stop this ugly, vile program that is harming children and creating massive child abuse.'  

Democratic Rep. David Cicilline said the policy was 'undermining the founding values of this country.'

'We saw the fear in the eyes of these children who are wondering when they will see their parent ever again. It's a disgrace, it's shameful and it's un-American,' he said.

A gate on the US side of the US-Mexican border