In September, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi emerged triumphantly from the White House, claiming they'd reached a very preliminary deal with Donald Trump to save DACA. The U.S. would keep its promise to not destroy a million lives for no good reason, and the Democratic leaders didn't even have to agree to a border wall to get it.

On Sunday, the White House shut down all that gloating. In a 70-point list, the Trump administration outlined its demands for hard-line immigration reform that's extremely anti-immigrant. Not anti–illegal immigration, but anti-immigration period, particularly from countries with people who aren't white. Family sponsorship will be more difficult. Inadmissibility guidelines will be broader. The White House also demands vastly expanded resources for ICE: 1,000 attorneys and 10,000 additional agents for an agency that's trying to arrest teenagers at school. And of course, it calls for $25 billion for a border wall.

So the message to Democrats is that if they want to protect DACA recipients, they need to throw most other immigrants under the bus. It's not immediately clear why Schumer and Pelosi had such unmerited optimism and confidence that the president would keep his word. Why would Trump just throw away so much leverage? He's run away from integrity at every chance he's gotten, breaking promises of transparency, defying international agreements, refusing to divest from his private companies. Hell, just threatening to eliminate DACA shows that he doesn't care about honoring deals that don't make him richer.

For just one example of how draconian Trump's immigration policy is, here's a detail from The Washington Post:

Under current law, minors who arrive from noncontiguous nations are afforded greater protections than those from Mexico and Canada, but the Trump administration is proposing to treat them all the same in a bid to be able to deport the minors more quickly. Such proposals will probably face fierce resistance from Democrats and human rights groups.

Children fleeing rape and murder in Central America? Send them back there faster. Asylum laws protecting people who came to the U.S. to escape violence? Neuter those. And if someone's home country won't take them back after they're deported? Put them in prison indefinitely.

As Politico points out, this list is likely to turn off Republicans as well as Democrats. But that may be because it's designed to pull any eventual legislation toward the fringe:

Two White House officials said the administration sees its immigration principles—which Trump was not deeply involved in writing; they were crafted by domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller—as an opening bid for an eventual DACA deal that may look dramatically different from the demands laid out Sunday evening.

So Democrats have changed their tone on working with the White House. It only took learning what Republicans have already figured out: Dealing with Trump is a nightmare.

Watch Now:

The Roots of Trump’s Prejudice