Which he is considering doing right now.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/97716688749379993...

"I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded."

(edit: updated link to Trump's twitter post)

> "I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL [...]

Can someone explain to me how Congress cannot get DACA handled? The last polling I saw showed that it had near universal support among Democrats, and a solid majority among Republicans (about 80% overall for the general population).

It should be sufficient for the Republicans who are in charge of Congress to write a simple, clean, bill--hell, just codify the Obama executive order on DACA into law, since the problem Republicans seemed to have with that was that they thought Obama did not have authority for it, not that they thought it was a bad policy. That should sail through Congress easily.

Or, if they are worried Trump might veto if it is not attached to wall funding, instead of passing it directly they could explicitly give Trump the power to issue an executive order covering this. That wouldn't give him his wall, but it would give him the opportunity to issue an order similar to Obama's, and then take credit for personally saving those children for unjust deportation after the Democrats failed to pass a law.

DACA is the executive policy while the DREAM Act is the bill that Congress has yet to handle. Congress hasn't dealt with it because the Republican party was using it as a bargaining chip in the budget negotiations -- their voters see other issues as more important than DACA/DREAM while the Democrats want it passed.

The Trump administration made it a pressing matter in the negotiations by rescinding DACA in September 2017, but over the following months various District Court cases were filed and the judges ordered the government to continue the DACA policy. The administration tried to appeal those findings directly in the Supreme Court -- bypassing the appeals courts -- but it was unanimously rejected, effectively upholding the lower courts' rulings for now.

Since DACA is no longer under existential threat the Democrats have backed off of the DREAM Act in order to get other priorities through, and the Republicans are happy to let sleeping dogs lie.

A majority among nominal Republicans is not sufficient if there's not a majority among the Republican base that actually votes in primaries, especially with the knowledge that support of DACA will be spun by further-right primary opponents as "letting criminals stream across our border".

It doesn't serve either party's interests to actually "solve" anything regarding immigration policy. It's far more valuable to keep it as a hot button issue to virtue signal over in order to garner votes.

Or the new bipartisan Russian sanctions in the bill: https://www.thedailybeast.com/congress-snuck-new-russia-sanc...