Rep. Mark Meadows walks to a closed-door conference with fellow Republicans after they met Tuesday night with President Donald Trump to discuss a GOP immigration bill, at the Capitol on June 20. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo GOP immigration bills on brink of collapse Trump’s address to House Republicans failed to win over skeptical conservatives.

Speaker Paul Ryan’s carefully crafted immigration bill appears headed toward defeat after tensions boiled over in the House ahead of Thursday’s vote.

In a rare dispute on the House floor Wednesday, Ryan and House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows argued loudly with each other over what exactly was going to see a vote. At one point, looking down his glasses, Meadows angrily gestured at Ryan.


Meadows later told reporters that Ryan was putting the wrong version of a conservative bill up for a vote and that there were two other provisions that were left out of the leadership-backed “compromise“ legislation he'd helped negotiate with moderate Republicans.

“The compromise bill is not ready for prime time,” Meadows said. “There are things that were supposed to be in the compromise bill that are not in the compromise bill that we had all agreed to.”

The public spat is the latest sign of how much trouble the GOP’s immigration push is in. But both the “compromise” bill and the more conservative plan were likely to fail even before the heated exchange between Ryan and Meadows.

Republican leaders met late Wednesday after the dispute and vowed to move forward with the votes Thursday.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the deputy House majority whip, downplayed the discord between the Freedom Caucus and House leadership, attributing the heated back-and-forth between Meadows and Ryan to "some drafting issues that can be remedied."

"Mark has been very forthcoming about the contents of the bill," he said, adding, "We’ve had a very open conversation."

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McHenry said the drafting issues amounted to a "miscommunication" between committee staffers and said the House was ready to move forward with a vote on both bills. Asked whether either would pass, though, McHenry flashed a half-smile and walked out of the Capitol.

Some top Republicans accused the Freedom Caucus of moving the goal posts and looking for a reason to vote against a bill President Donald Trump wants them to pass.

“Well, Freedom Caucus strikes again,” said one top source following the negotiations closely.

Trump was unable to persuade wary conservatives to back a "compromise" immigration package during his address to GOP lawmakers Tuesday night. Meadows was one of the few on the far right who was leaning toward backing the legislation. After his exchange with Ryan, Meadows said he would not — unless leadership fixed the problems.

The fight came as GOP leaders spent all Wednesday frantically trying to whip votes before the Thursday night vote on the bills. Ryan's team bussed undecided members to the White House to meet with the president. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen also came to the Hill to try to drum up support.

But conservatives still maintained that Trump had not come out strongly enough in support of the bill. And talks also broke down between members, beyond just the Ryan-Meadows dispute.

Conservatives were under the impression that House GOP leaders were calling up an amended version of a conservative bill in addition to the compromise measure. But Ryan, they said, is bringing up the original version of the text in an act of bad faith.

One top Republican said privately that Ryan would try to reach out to Meadows to straighten out the dispute. But GOP leaders argue that there is currently no text for a bill that would meet the Freedom Caucus’ demands.

Meanwhile, in a dramatic reversal that may reshape the immigration debate, Trump issued an executive order Wednesday halting the administration’s policy of separating migrant families that illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump previously insisted that only Congress could fix the problem.

Trump also repeated his call for comprehensive immigration reform, saying the time for Congress to act is now. "I think we have an opportunity to fix the whole immigration picture," Trump told reporters as he held a televised meeting with Republican lawmakers.

Yet Trump once again failed to forcefully endorse the compromise plan pushed by Ryan, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other top Republicans during the meeting. Separate lobbying efforts by Sessions and Nielsen also seemed to do little to sway Republicans who had yet to commit to voting for the compromise bill.

Nielsen told lawmakers the executive order is only a temporary reprieve and that Congress still needs to act to permanently end family separations. The order also doesn’t address the more than 2,000 children who have been pulled from their parents since the Trump administration began enforcing the policy in earnest in early May.

“We are always working with the Department of Health and Human Services to reunify families as quickly as we can. We’ll continue to do that,” she told reporters after the meeting when asked what would happen to the children already separated from their parents.

Nielsen added: “Congress needs to legislate.”

The expected demise of both immigration measures suggests that the president’s attempt to leverage his hotly contested family separation policy to get his border wall and curbs to legal immigration will not work.

White House officials had sought to use the grim scenes at the border to force Democrats to the negotiating table and finally land Trump some major changes to U.S. immigration law. But Trump can’t even get his own party on the same page, let alone Democrats.

Just hours before Trump signed the executive order, Ryan and GOP leaders were echoing White House talking points, telling reporters Wednesday morning that Homeland Security had no choice but to separate families under the current law — never mind that legal experts and a number of their own GOP colleagues disputed that notion.

Ryan also would not say whether he would take up a standalone bill to address the crisis, although his comments came before Trump announced plans to sign the executive order.

Throughout the day, as it became increasingly clear that no larger immigration package would pass the House, a growing number of GOP lawmakers asked leaders to take up a narrow legislation stopping the separation of families. Trump's executive order may be challenged in court, and they want congressional action on the issue now.

"I whipped undecided," said New Jersey GOP Rep. Leonard Lance, a moderate facing a tough reelection, about the compromise bill. "I certainly want to have a path to citizenship for the DACA population. I'm concerned that this bill will not pass in the Senate, and I want to resolve the issue."

Lance added that he'd like to see a standalone bill on the family separation crisis.

Meadows too said he still hoped for a vote on a separate bill aimed at keeping families together. Meadows introduced his own proposal earlier this week and said late Wednesday he was planning on offering a retooled version after consulting with other Republicans and a few Democrats.

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.