Republican negotiations on a House immigration bill that would fix the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are in the final stages, key lawmakers said as they left a secretive meeting in the House basement on Wednesday.

Both moderates and conservatives are coming together on an outline of a bill brought on by weeks of negotiations behind closed doors, as leadership brought the two wings of the party together to avert rebellions on both sides.

After a breakthrough agreement on how to proceed Tuesday -- and arm twisting by leadership -- that cut off moderates' efforts to buck leadership control of the floor, talks Wednesday centered around hammering out the details of the policy itself.

We're just doing the cleanup stuff from the negotiations that (Reps) Raul (Labrador) and Carlos (Curbelo) did yesterday," said conservative Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows as he left member negotiations Wednesday. "So we're just trying to dot our I's and cross our T's."

"We're just about there," Curbelo said. "I think we'll definitely see text this week."


CNN has obtained a draft from a source close to the negotiations of the outline lawmakers are working from to write the bill, which, when described to Curbelo, was confirmed as largely still what they're working on minus a few "details filled in." The broader GOP conference was briefed on the toplines of the bill in a Wednesday morning meeting.


On the DACA piece, to protect the young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children that were covered by DACA, which Trump has decided to end, the bill would create a new visa that would include DACA eligible immigrants but also be broader, so conservatives are satisfied it's not a "special pathway" to citizenship for undocumented immigrants alone.

The proposal would allow both individuals who qualify for the new iteration of a DACA permit and children of legal immigrants who have grown up in the country but may be aging out of status to apply for a green card after a waiting period.

To make room for those new visas, other parts of legal immigration would be cut accordingly, on the family side and diversity visa. The plan would cut visa categories for married adult children of US citizens and adult siblings of US citizens.

The cut visas from family categories and diversity would be reallocated to the new green card category and employment categories.

It will appropriate $25 billion for the wall and border security.

Curbelo said he believes the bill is picking up support.

"The reports and feedback I'm getting back from conservatives is that there's growing momentum," Curbelo said.
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