• e-mail

The White House says it will reveal its immigration overhaul in the 'next couple of weeks' but said Monday that it is 'still in the process of figuring out all the details' of President Trump's sanctuary city proposal.

Trump claimed in a weekend interview that his administration is releasing immigrants 'into sanctuary cities almost exclusively.' However, press secretary Sarah Sanders did not have not details to share with DailyMail.com on Monday morning.

'We're in the process of figuring out all the details on how that would work. The priorities are making sure that it's done safely and expeditiously. But we're in the process of moving forward on that front,' she said. 

Trump claimed in a weekend interview that his administration releasing immigration 'into sanctuary cities almost exclusively' but Sarah Sanders did not have not details to share with DailyMail.com on Monday morning at the White House

The president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said a week ago on Tuesday that he would turn his immigration reform draft into Trump by this week. It is expected to focus on the legal immigration and the president's desire to move to a merit-based system.

Sanders said Monday on Fox News, 'We're still working through that process. I expect that to be over the next couple of weeks that plan will be rolled out. In the meantime we're still calling on Congress to help us fix some of the immediate things that could be done.'  

Trump meets this Tuesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.  A spokesman for Pelosi said in response to a request for comment that is a meeting she 'requested on infrastructure' after DailyMail.com asked about the possibility the leaders will discuss immigration and Trump's sanctuary cities plan. 

Sanders indicated to reporters after her appearance on Fox News that the topic of immigration is likely to come up.

'The primary focus of that is infrastructure but certainly wouldn't be surprised if immigration isn't discussed, as well. Two very big topics,' Sanders said after her Fox interview. 'We really do have a crisis at the border. In fact it is inhumane for us to ignore it longer.' 

Trump's spokeswoman said the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border is 'skyrocketing,' as are the number of individuals being 'smuggled and taken advantage of, exploited' and Democrats will hopefully have a 'new willingness' to help Trump address it.

'We'd like to see that happen tomorrow,' she stated during a gaggle with reporters outside the White House.

Trump's meeting with Pelosi and Schumer will be his first since a immigration blow-up earlier this year that preceded his national emergency declaration.

San Francisco is Pelosi's home city, and the sanctuary cities proposal takes aim at Democratic congressional districts.

In an interview with Maria Bartiromo that aired Sunday on Fox News, the president said his administration has already begun sending illegal immigrants to cities that promote themselves as safe havens for migrants without papers.

'We’re releasing them into sanctuary cities almost exclusively. You know, sanctuary cities want them. But once we started releasing them, they didn’t want them. So, you know, they want them – they talk – they talk a good game but once you start saying "OK, congratulations, here are some," and they don’t want them. And they fight very hard,' he said. 'So, the whole sanctuary city thing is a big scam.'

Trump said 'people are pouring up because our economy is so good' and U.S. immigration 'laws are so bad.'

'We have things nobody in their right mind would have,' he said. 'We’re trying to get rid of them, the Democrats won’t do it. We need some Democrat votes. We’re unanimous with the Republicans but we need some Democrat votes and they go out of their way to allow these people to come in.'

Trump said the existing laws are 'incompetent' and the people who made 'hate our country.'

Trump's meeting with Pelosi and Schumer will be his first since a immigration blow-up earlier this year that preceded Trump's national emergency declaration

The Republican president also claimed that family separation drove the numbers down, but it was an inhumane policy, and so he ended it.

'We go out and we stop the separation. The problem is you have 10 times more people coming up with their families. It’s like Disneyland now. You know, before you’d get separated so people would say let’s not go up,' he argued. 

Trump added: 'Now you don’t get separated and, you know, while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have - literally you have 10 times more families coming up because they’re not going to be separated from their children.'

He opined that it's 'just incentive that is obviously a disaster' for the country and said he'd be deporting people faster if he wasn't required to register illegal immigrants and give them due process. 

'Another country just says sorry, you can’t come into our country and they walk them out. In our country you have to bring them to court, you have to have Perry Mason involved, I mean, you know, it’s all legal,' he complained.  

The president claimed in extensive remarks on the topic that migrants and their lawyers are abusing the system.

'Every time they catch a cold they try and blame Border Patrol. It’s a disgrace what’s going on and it -- it could be solved in -- in 15 minutes if the Democrats would give us the votes, it would be over,' he insisted.

Trump meets Tuesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to discuss infrastructure and immigration

Trump told Bartiromo, 'We don't need a court system.' He said the country needs a wall to protect the border. 

'We’re going to have all the infrastructure soon, I’ll have the wall up, I mean by the end of the next year most of the wall is going to be up,' he said. 

Apprehensions at the border have jumped significantly since this time last year. They have been nearly twice as high some months of the current fiscal year, and in March U.S. Customs and Border Patrol says 103,492 people were processed. 

That's more than more than double the number individuals that CBP says it processed in March of 2017 — 50,347. Of those, 8,975 were unaccompanied minors.

Typically, the number of immigrants arriving at the border jumps in the warmer months, which means the influx is historically about to climb.

He claimed that the administration is building 'bigger storage areas' to hold all the migrants that are coming over.

'Now we could only hold so much with these massive storage areas and we can only hold so much, so we’re building bigger storage areas. What we need is new laws that don’t allow this so when somebody comes in we say sorry, you got to go out,' he said.

Trump said Sunday that he's working on immigration package with Sen. Lindsey Graham. He did not say what's in it but said it would prioritize merit-based workers. 

'They have skills, they have talent. We have people coming in under these crazy laws that – I mean under these crazy laws that – I mean if they – if they need welfare or if they need hand outs in the next 50 years, they – they’re almost incentivized,' he said. 'Those are the people that we’re supposed to be taking and we take as few as possible of them, I’ll tell you.'

Jared Kushner said Tuesday at Time 100 event that he'd submit his immigration plan to the president by this week

Kushner previewed the plan at a Time 100 summit last Tuesday. He said he'd submit it to Trump by this week.

He said he solicited senior White House adviser and immigration hawk Stephen Miller's input, as well as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Kevin Hassett's.

'And I say that If that if I can get Stephen Miller and Kevin Hassett to agree on an immigration plan, then Middle East peace will be easy by comparison,' he joked, making reference to another big issue he's working on for the president.

Initially, the White House official was working almost exclusively on the Middle East peace deal and his Office of American Innovation. 

Kushner noted at the summit that immigration wasn't a topic he came to D.C. to work on but his father-in-law asked him to take it on.

'I do believe that the president's position on immigration has been maybe defined by his opponents by what he's against as opposed to what he's for,' he said. 'What I've done is I've tried to put together a very detailed proposal for him.' 

He said the first issue he looked at as he put it together was border security, including a wall or a barrier.  Kushner said he'd spent a lot of time with border security professionals, learning what option be most effective.  

'We want to protect our country's humanitarian values. We want to make sure we're reunifying families, and we want to do this in a way that allows our country to be competitive long term,' he said. 'And my hope is we can really do something that unifies people around what we're for on immigration.'

He says he is still working on the guest worker component of it. He suggested it could be tacked on after he turns in his draft proposal to Trump. 

Kushner said 'the president's been involved very much so' and he will present the plan 'probably the end of this week, next week' to his father-in-law.

'And then he'll make some changes, likely, and then he'll decide what he wants to do with it, when he wants to do with it,' he said.  

He acknowledged, 'It's very, very complicated, but it's a very interesting issue, and if we can solve it, I do think its a critical component for America's long-term competitive advantage.' 

Before the on-stage interview, the president said, 'The Wall is being rapidly built!'

He encouraged his supporters to watch Kushner after it had concluded, saying it was a 'great' performance by the senior official who is also related to him through his marriage to Trump's elder daughter Ivanka.

'Nice to have extraordinarily smart people serving our Country!' the president tweeted.