In exchange for his support, Schumer said, he has received assurances from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that if an agreement isn't reached by then, the GOP leader will bring a vote to the floor on legislation to grant legal status to those protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, roughly 700,000 immigrants who are in the country illegally after being brought here as children. The bill also extends the expired Children's Health Insurance Program for six years.
McConnell says Democrats caved because they realized holding out for a DACA deal tied to the funding deal was not wise politically.
"I think if we've learned anything during this process it's that a strategy to shut down the government over the issue of illegal immigration is something that the American people didn't understand," McConnell said.
Schumer, however, argued that blame for the weekend-long stalemate lay at the president's feet.
"The reason the Republican majority had such difficulty finding consensus is they could never get a firm grip on what the president of their party wanted to do. These days, you never know who to deal with when it comes to the Republicans," Schumer said. "The Republican leaders told me to work out a deal with the White House. The White House said, work it out with Republican leaders on the Hill. Separately, President Trump turned away from not one, but two, bipartisan compromises. Each would have avoided this shutdown."
In a statement later Monday, Trump said that with the government on the path to reopening, the administration would work on immigration legislation — but "only if it's good for our country."
"I am pleased that Democrats in Congress have come to their senses and are now willing to fund our great military, border patrol, first responders and insurance for vulnerable children," Trump said. "As I've always said, once the government is funded, my administration will work towards solving the problem of very unfair illegal immigration. We will make a long-term deal on immigration if and only if it's good for our country."
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dodged questions at the daily briefing as to whether that would include a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, which many hard-line conservatives oppose. And she insisted that the president has been clear about what he wants in an immigration bill, despite shifting positions over the past week that even GOP leaders have complained about.
With the measure moving forward, it will now be hard for Democrats to argue they extracted many concessions from GOP leaders. McConnell's promise is just that — a promise. "Some of us struggle to trust him," Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told NPR's Morning Edition, "because of the famously vulgar way that President Trump sort of blew up the last time that Sens. [Lindsey] Graham and [Dick] Durbin offered him a bipartisan deal [on immigration]."
Democrats were trying to frame the deal as a temporary victory, though. Senate Minority Whip Durbin took the floor to call the DACA issue the "civil rights issue of our time" and underscore the importance of passing an immigration bill by the new deadline, which he said McConnell had assured them would be on a level playing field.
While many Senate Democrats had remained entrenched in their opposition to any funding deal that didn't include a DACA fix, a growing number of moderate lawmakers were wary of an extended shutdown fight. Most of the endangered Democrats who are up for re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won all voted to advance the measure, except for Montana Sen. Jon Tester.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who faces a potentially competitive re-election this fall, sounded optimistic about the agreement.
"What you have is pretty much an ironclad commitment that if we don't resolve this -- and that's what we're going to try to do with the Graham bill -- resolve the DACA issue by Feb. 8, the commitment is you go to the floor with a neutral bill, like a shell, and you let the Senate process work," Nelson said.
Many Democrats had worried that the Republican talking point --that Democrats were siding with "illegal immigrants" over the military and government -- would resonate with voters as the stalemate extended into the workweek Monday morning.
President Trump tweeted that argument himself.