This is just too hilarious:

As Democrats warily prepare to negotiate an immigration deal with President Trump, they face an unexpected political foe: many of the 800,000 young, undocumented immigrants threatened with deportation whom they are championing.

The pressure from some immigrant activists to reject any compromise that would tighten border security has frustrated Democratic leaders, who recognize the political risks of being labeled the party of open borders — a potentially lethal tag as they seek to regain support from working-class voters across the Midwest.
…
So far, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leaders, are staying pragmatic, even in the face of protests that have been personal and cutting. (Activists called Ms. Pelosi a liar in San Francisco–editor’s note, see RedState’s coverage of the Pelosi fiasco.)

They have already signaled that they are willing to consider Republican demands for increased enforcement along the border with Mexico in exchange for a legislative fix to the threatened Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which protects young immigrants brought to the country as children.

“It is naïve for us to believe that we will get 12 Republicans to vote for DACA or the Dream Act without putting something on the table,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, an co-author of the Dream Act, which would offer a path to citizenship for certain undocumented immigrants who arrived as children. “There’s always going to be a group that wants more. There are some people who want all or nothing.”

Democrats need to be mindful not just of white working-class voters but all voters, said Cornell Belcher, who worked as one of President Barack Obama’s pollsters during his 2008 presidential campaign. Democrats have to “thread a fine needle,” he said, because polls show that voters broadly “feel as though their borders need to be more secure.”

But activists worry that any compromise could carry a very personal price: Their own long-term safety might be secured only in exchange for an increased threat of deportation for their undocumented parents and friends who do not qualify for such protections under the program.

Some thoughts on this.

First, it is more obvious than ever that the DREAMers are simply a stalking horse for perpetual grants of amnesty to illegal aliens. No matter how sympathetic their situation it is now clear than this sympathy is being used by open borders advocates as a weapon.

Second, the Democrats are keenly aware that the DREAMers are more of a millstone about their necks than an electoral bonanza. If they push for amnesty they will be punished in battleground states and if they don’t push for amnesty they will be abandoned by the DREAMers and their allies.

Third, the best course for the GOP on this is to force the Democrats to offer a bill and shamelessly demagogue it as being weak on security and pro-amnesty. They also need to drag their feet so this drama plays out during next year’s elections.

Fourth, while sympathetic to individual DREAMers, I’m rapidly coming to the position that the best thing for the US to do is to treat them like any other illegal. Their advocates are showing that they are less interested in the DREAMers than in opening our borders and I don’t know how Congress would be able to structure a bill to grant relief to current DREAMers and not create a magnet for other families to cross into the US illegally in order to get permanent residence for their children.