WASHINGTON — During a telephone briefing today for Republican staff, the White House discussed its demands for any Congressional deal to protect Dreamers.

Lorella Praeli, American Civil Liberties Union director of immigration policy and campaigns, said:

“Today the White House released a hateful, xenophobic immigration proposal that would slash legal immigration to levels not seen since the racial quotas of the 1920s, eliminate legal immigration channels for African countries, and spend $25 billion for a harmful, wasteful border wall and an increase in Border Patrol and ICE agents.

“Stephen Miller has said that his proposal is ‘extremely generous,’ but the only community that benefits from this supposed generosity are white supremacists. The White House proposal is clearly an effort to sabotage bipartisan talks on the issue by continuing to put issues on the table that are non-starters.

“The crisis facing Dreamers and their families is urgent, but addressing it must not come at the expense of using immigrant youth as bargaining chips, devastating border communities with harmful, wasteful walls and agents, or taking this nativist screed seriously. This proposal should be deemed dead on arrival.”