As the clock wound toward a shutdown of the federal government on Friday night, a group of young immigrants who have found themselves at the heart of the debate gathered on the front of lawn of the US Capitol, its dome illuminated in the background.
“For all those Dreamers out there,” said Joe Kennedy III, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, addressing nearly the 700,000 undocumented migrants brought to the US as children, “our message for each and every one of you: there are those in our government that see you, that hear you, that believe and know that this country belongs to you.”
Lawmakers have worked for months to negotiate a deal that would extend to these young migrants the legal protections of an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Daca.
Now, however, the program is at the center of the political battle that has produced a federal government shutdown for the first time since 2013.
In September, Trump rescinded Daca and gave Congress until March to find a legislative solution.
Democrats have insisted the only way to ensure the issue is resolved on time is to tie it to a must-pass spending bill. Republicans have argued that immigration should proceed separately.
Any hope of an agreement was complicated on Saturday, when the White House said it would not negotiate immigration policy with Congress until the shutdown ends.
The president challenged lawmakers to craft a “bill of love” that also included funding for a border wall along the southern border with Mexico. He promised to sign whatever Congress brought to him.
But when a deal arrived, immigration hardliners whispered in his ear and defeated the proposal.
On Friday, as Congress barrelled toward a shutdown, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, made a final pitch that included funding for a border wall. It was not enough and the Senate failed to pass a measure that would fund the federal government.
Lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Saturday morning, in hopes of brokering a swift end to the shutdown. A shuttering of the federal government stretching into days rather than hours would be undoubtedly perilous for lawmakers in both political parties.
Democrats facing re-election in conservative states that Trump won in 2016 fear that a government shutdown over a group of undocumented migrants, no matter how sympathetic their plight, may have political consequences for their campaigns in the midterms this year.
On Friday, five red-state Senate Democrats joined Republicans to support a bill to keep the government open.
Democrats also face pressure from their progressive flank to block any funding measure that does not include a pathway to citizenship for the Dreamers.
Yet Republicans, who control the White House and both chambers of Congress, could face their own repercussions.
This is the first government shutdown to occur under a unified government. Polling suggests voters will hold them responsible.
Furthermore, the spending bill that failed in the Senate, which would only have funded the government through mid-February, included a six-year authorization of a popular health insurance program (Chip), which provides healthcare coverage to 9 million children but which has been allowed to lapse.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Friday found that 48% of Americans would blame Trump and the Republicans in the event of a shutdown; 28% said the Democrats would be responsible and 18% said both parties would be equally at fault.
Trump and Republicans hope to frame the shutdown as a choice by Democrats to protect “illegal immigrants” at the expense of Americans. A White House statement issued just before midnight said “this is the behavior of obstructionist losers, not legislators”.
“Hey, Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin,” South Carolina’s Republican lieutenant governor, Kevin Bryant, tweeted at the Senate minority leader and his No 2 on Saturday morning, “Mexico isn’t a state. Why are you representing it?”
In a flurry of morning tweets on Saturday, Trump, who was forced to postpone plans to celebrate his first anniversary at his Mar-a-Lago resort, accused Democrats of holding members of the military “hostage” in an effort to create a system of “unchecked illegal immigration”.
He wrote: “Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border. They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess!”
But it was Trump who balked at a deal he and Schumer devised over lunch at the White House on Friday, that would have kept the government open and struck a compromise on immigration.
In a scathing floor speech on Friday night, Schumer revealed that he offered a concession on funding for the border wall, a line Democrats have said they would not cross in exchange for protections for Dreamers.
Even that was not enough to persuade the irascible president.
Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, who has emerged during the negotiations as an unexpected hardliner on immigration, called Schumer after the meeting and said the Democrats’ offer lacked strong enough controls on immigration.
Schumer said this was reflective of Trump’s unpredictable position on any immigration compromise. Last week, the president exacerbated the issue when, during a meeting with lawmakers at the White House, he questioned why the US had to accept immigrants from “shithole” countries in Africa rather than from places like Norway.
“What has transpired since that meeting in the Oval Office is indicative of the entire tumultuous and chaotic process Republicans have engaged in the negotiations thus far,” Schumer said.
“Even though President Trump seemed to like an outline of a deal in the room, he did not press his party in Congress to accept it.”