The White House on Sunday issued a list of demands that it wants fulfilled if young immigrants in the United States are to be protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme. The demands include funding for a wall along the border with Mexico, tougher laws for asylum seekers and a crackdown on sanctuary cities.

Two lawmakers of the Democratic Party described the list as “far beyond reasonable” and said it did not “represent any attempt at compromise”.

“We told the president at our meeting that we were open to reasonable border security measures,” Democrats Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi said in a joint statement. “But this list goes so far beyond what is reasonable.”

In September, US President Donald Trump had revoked the Daca programme that protected immigrants who arrived in the country as children – called “dreamers” – from deportation. This includes up to 7,000 people of Indian origin. However, Trump had later said that dreamers do not need to worry about deportation for at least six months.

The Democrats had hoped to make Trump reconsider his decision through negotiations, but in a letter to lawmakers, the president said the list had “reforms that must be included” in any deal to protect the dreamers under Daca again, according to The New York Times.

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, a policy framed during the administration of former President Barack Obama, protects nearly 8,00,000 such people and allows them to work and study legally in the country.