President Donald Trump had previously argued that efforts at passing an immigration reform bill in the House were futile because any measure would face grim prospects at best in the Senate. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo GOP immigration bill goes down in rebuff to Trump The bill failed by a wide margin despite the president’s last-minute tweet urging passage.

The House delivered a massive defeat to a Republican immigration bill Wednesday, despite President Donald Trump’s last-minute push for the legislation and weeks of negotiation between GOP lawmakers.

The 121-301 vote came amid opposition from all Democrats and dozens of Republicans, who feared backing a bill that could be tagged as “amnesty” by the right — even though it closely aligned with Trump’s immigration proposal and received an all-caps Twitter endorsement from the president earlier in the day.


“HOUSE REPUBLICANS SHOULD PASS THE STRONG BUT FAIR IMMIGRATION BILL, KNOWN AS GOODLATTE II, IN THEIR AFTERNOON VOTE TODAY, EVEN THOUGH THE DEMS WON’T LET IT PASS IN THE SENATE,” Trump tweeted. “PASSAGE WILL SHOW THAT WE WANT STRONG BORDERS & SECURITY WHILE THE DEMS WANT OPEN BORDERS = CRIME. WIN!”

House Republicans said before the vote that it was too little, too late.

If Trump really wanted this bill to pass, senior GOP sources said, he should have tweeted his endorsement earlier instead of repeatedly sending mixed signals to the party. Just last week, he said Republicans were “wasting their time” trying to pass legislation.

Indeed, the president's tweet, which came about five hours before the vote, marked an end to an exhausting 10 days for Republicans who tried to discern how Trump felt about their bill. The proposal echoed Trump’s own legislative framework to fund a border wall with Mexico, curb legal immigration and offer a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.

But some on the far-right panned the idea of providing a path to citizenship for participants in the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. And Trump has been unwilling to take them on, changing his mind over and over such that many Republicans told leaders they couldn’t take the risky vote.

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The roller coaster for the GOP started almost two weeks ago when Trump told "Fox & Friends" that he wouldn't sign the bill. A few days later, he reversed himself — coming to Capitol Hill and promising House Republicans that he has their backs "1,000 percent" and that they should send him an immigration bill.

Then, last Friday morning, he tweeted that Republicans were wasting their time because the bill would never pass the Senate. And now he's back to supporting the legislation.

House Republicans say this is exactly why they cannot trust anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. They wanted the president to give them cover to support the bill but worried he would cut them loose, just as did when he blasted a government spending bill they passed in March.

On Wednesday morning, the House GOP whip team emailed Trump's tweet around to lawmakers, hoping to change some minds at the last-minute. But some lawmakers had already started telling constituents how they will vote.

Some more conservative members also had other qualms with the bill.

Republicans from across the conference wanted to add E-Verify to the legislation, a mandate forcing companies to certify the legal status of their workers. Moderate Republicans who have been negotiating with conservatives offered to do so, spending all last weekend writing the 100-page amendment. But when it became clear that the proposal would not actually win over many conservatives, lawmakers agreed to drop the idea altogether.

Conservatives were also pushing to include language barring the parents of Dreamers from ever getting citizenship. Moderates have said that’s a nonstarter.

Immigration has long divided the House Republican conference, even leading in part to the ouster of ex-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Without Trump's early and steadfast support on the proposal, GOP leadership sources said their "compromise" bill, crafted over the course of several weeks between the GOP factions, never had a prayer.

It wasn't for lack of trying. Conservatives and moderates both gave ground in the talks. Conservatives for the first time suggested they could back a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers — so long as they get everything they wanted on enforcement. Moderates agreed to red-meat conservative immigration policies that they hate and which could hurt them politically.

But the two sides never came to an agreement.



And that’s largely because Trump never forced them to. Leadership ally Rep. Tom Cole stood up in a closed-door GOP conference meeting last week and quoted the opening line of the movie “Patton” about the famous military general: “America loves a winner and will not tolerate a loser.” Trump, the Oklahoma Republican said, is the same way and will embrace the conference if they actually pass something.

GOP leaders have also been out front trying to sell their proposal, though they simply can’t give conservatives the cover on the right that Trump can.

House Majority Whip Steve Scalise went on "Fox & Friends" just minutes before the Trump tweet to try to drum up support for the legislation, even as he admitted they didn't have the votes for passage.

"This bill is even stronger than the last bill at building the wall, front loading the money, so President Trump can have the money to build the wall, close loopholes, re-unite families, all of those things," Scalise said.

The House rejected a previous immigration bill drafted by conservative hard-liners last week.

But the GOP won’t be able to drop the issue any time soon. House Republicans are now likely to try to advance legislation addressing the migrant family separation crisis at the border, which the Trump administration is struggling to address.