WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Will Hurd said Monday that he has reached an agreement with a Democratic lawmaker to fix the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and increase border security, a compromise he hopes will be a foundation for a deal in coming days between Congress and the White House.

Hurd, R-San Antonio, who emerged as a key negotiator aimed at a DACA fix, said legislation he has crafted with California Democrat Pete Aguilar includes border security provisions demanded by Republicans along with protections for around 800,000 young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.

Their legislation requires the Homeland Security Department to conduct a mile-by-mile analysis of the 2,000-mile border with Mexico by 2020 and authorizes, if federal officials deem it necessary, building physical barriers in certain segments.

But the authorizing legislation doesn’t fund the border wall that President Donald Trump continues to demand. That funding would need to come in a separate appropriations bill as negotiations proceed, aimed at a deal to prevent a shutdown of many government operations Jan. 19.

“It’s a foundation for these discussions. It’s a big deal,” Hurd said.

“The significance of this is that you have Republicans and Democrats agreeing to border security and a DACA fix. And that hasn’t happened before,” he said.

A bipartisan meeting dealing with immigration is scheduled for Tuesday at the White House. At that meeting, the newly drawn legislation likely will be aired. Last Friday, the White House distributed a list of hard-edged immigration proposals, including a request for $18 billion to build the wall.

Hurd’s Uniting and Securing America Act is the product of negotiations between Hurd and Aguilar, a leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus who is influential among Democrats on immigration matters. The legislation had not been aired as of late Monday by Republican and Democratic caucuses in the House, and the high-level negotiations might well move in different directions.

But Hurd said he is hopeful and believes that there is support for what they’ve put together among dozens of Republicans and an equal number of Democrats, many of whom have pressed for a vote on what they refer to as a clean Dream Act: legislation that would offer DACA protections that Trump ordered stripped as of March 5.

“There have been many conversations, and the goal is to continue to talk about this and figure out how you get more votes and get this done and make sure the kids who have only known the United States of America can stay here,” he said.

“Of the reasonable people that are ultimately going to get this deal done, nobody is talking about deporting these kids to countries they’ve never known,” he said.

The Hurd-Aguilar legislation offers a permanent legislative fix for DACA and enables individuals who qualify to get in line for a green card and eventual citizenship after a conditional residency.

Hurd said requirements would include two years of post-secondary school or completion of military enlistment, employment 80 percent of the time and no criminal record.

A summary of the legislation notes that it does not include a special path to citizenship for DACA recipients. What that apparently means is that DACA recipients would enter the same stream as legal permanent residents seeking citizenship.

Regarding so-called chain migration, which Trump says he wants to end, the summary notes that it maintains present law requiring parents of individuals who arrived in the U.S. illegally to leave the country for at least 10 years before applying for a visa to return.

Many of the border security provisions draw from Hurd’s previously filed “Smart Wall” legislation, which aims at deploying sensors, radar and other surveillance technology in a broadly designed effort to gain “operational control” over the border within three years.

Other provisions include increases in the number of immigration judges and attorneys to reduce the backlog of cases that have left people in legal limbo for years. Additionally, the bill has provisions aimed at improving conditions in Central American nations from which many families have fled in recent years, complicating immigration problems in the U.S.

The nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center recommended some of the provisions in the legislation.

Henry Cisneros, a former San Antonio mayor who chairs the center’s immigration task force, called the legislation a positive step.

“I don’t know what the final legislation will look like, but I think that it is a substantial contribution to this process,” he said, referring to challenges in bringing Republicans and Democrats together.